Selling STEM key to inspiring future energy workers

The type of impassioned national fervor that propelled the United States into the space race in the 1960’s may be a missing ingredient in the current evolution of the energy industry, witnesses testified at a congressional hearing on workforce development on Thursday.

The energy industry has been earnestly reaching out to the nation’s youth and younger adults to encourage them to take the career path into the professions and trades that will be needed to produce and transmit electricity in the future. But there were also concerns voiced at the hearing that students are still avoiding the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) classes needed to get their foot in the door.

“I think we are talking about the challenge of our time; they aren’t choosing to go into the STEM fields,” U.S. Rep. Ken Calvert, (R-CA)., said during the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, and Related Agencies hearing on March 7. “The challenge is, we need another ‘Sputnik moment.’”

Calvert recalled the days when high school halls were filled with aspiring rocket scientists ready and able to tackle calculus, chemistry, and grinding study for the good of the country – and their careers. And witnesses agreed that a little more enthusiasm about STEM might steer more promising students into the burgeoning energy field.

“We all wanted to be scientists and engineers in the 60s because of what NASA was doing,” said Morgan Smith, CEO of Consolidated Nuclear Security, LLC. “We didn’t actually need a STEM program; we had NASA.”S

Meanwhile, climate change may not be the Cold War of the 21^stCentury, but there is no denying that it has prompted some major changes in the energy industry in terms of skills required in the coming years as new sources of power generation come online and the grid itself expands and becomes more digital.

Energy jobs generally require candidates to have technical proficiency, even in the blue-collar trades that build, maintain and operate high-priced equipment and wires that carry heavy loads of energy. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) noted that its members must undergo up to five years of classroom training and field experience before earning journeyman designation. “STEM gets them in the door,” said Donnie Colston, director of the Utility Department at the IBEW.

Utilities such as Georgia Power and Southern Company have been aggressively supporting programs aimed at drumming-up enthusiasm for STEM. Senior Vice President for Human Resources Sloane Evans told the subcommittee about her company’s two-pronged approach to reach out to prospective employees who have completed their schooling, and to younger prospects with programs to assist teachers with STEM education and to provide mentoring in the classroom. “We have to think about where we recruit and look at the different recruitment pipelines,” she said. “It goes back to starting early.”

Mentoring was an example of the kind of person-to-person outreach the panelists agreed was the best way to win the attention of young students as they begin to think about their future career paths. “We are even in kindergarten talking about and getting kids excited about STEM,” Vance said.

Sponsoring robotics contests and other events are a valuable strategy, but the idea of interaction between energy industry and other mentors and students accomplished even more by creating a personal connection.

“It (STEM) can be made exciting, but we are just not making it exciting,” Smith said. “We have to engage in a greater way, as an industry and as labor, with the classrooms and make it real.”