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1 4 S T U F F • F a l l 2 0 1 9 C O M P A N Y P R O F I L E S S T U F F M a d e I n N H . c o m The idea for the program came out of discussions between the company's president of North America and chief commercial officer, Dick Foreman and Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig about 14 to 15 months ago, according to Elliot. The coursework is divided into different topic areas, with different employees from Velcro stepping in to teach them. The first days begin with courses on employee benefits, codes of conduct and emotional intelligence, which are taught by Velcro human resource executives. Part of the idea behind having different roles stepping in for the instruction, Elliot said, is to showcase positions students may not even know exist. "Then they dig into more of the manufacturing side of the business," Elliot said. Students learn about structured problem solving, performance metrics, safety and manufacturing processes. They also spend two full days shadowing operators and checking out the different Velcro facilities. At the end of the course, students do presentations before the Velcro instructors, which demonstrates what they've learned but also gives them a dry run at another corporate skill. Elliot said the courses are very discussion and dialogue oriented, with instructors treating students like adult colleagues. "We got tremendous response from the students," Elliot said. "The relationship that they develop over that five or six hours is amazing." Elliot said Velcro invested its own resources renovating a classroom at West High for the program, designing it to look like a modern office space with a big screen TV wired into a remote video conferencing network, and providing 14 to 16 of its own employees to help teach. They worked closely with Principal Rick Dichard on creating the curriculum. Micro-electronics Boot Camp While the Manchester program is still new, some companies have gotten a head start trying to create a direct pipeline of workers through the available education systems. Butch Lock, the manufacturing director at BAE Systems in Nashua, said he worked with Nashua Community College about 3.5 years ago to create a program taught at the school called Micro-electronics Boot Camp. For 10 weeks, a cohort of about 16 students, usually in their mid-20s to mid-50s, studies how to handle micro-chip assemblies and connect gold wires a third the width of human hair. Alene Candles 51 Scarborough Lane, Milford FOUNDED: 1995 EMPLOYEES: 205 full-time SCHOOL CREDIT PROGRAM: Manufacturing Exploration and Externship STUDENTS PER TERM: 12 students PROGRAM FOCUS: Engineering basics and manufacturing experience PHOTO | Matthew Wright VIDEO LINK SEE P AGE 7 Paige McNamara from Manchester West High School participated in the Velcro University program.