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The best way to get a job in the green economy may just be to go back to school — voke school, that is.
Solar learning labs, on-site wind turbines and state-of-the-art energy efficiency equipment located at several of Massachusetts’ vocational-technical schools are fast becoming the envy of educators and cleantech companies alike, providing an opportunity for teenagers who are interested in the trades. They can add green skills to their tool belts and potentially get a leg up on other candidates vying for green collar jobs.
Voke schools are playing a major role in the state’s green workforce development plans. The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center has offered up to $150,000 to a consortium of schools for educator training and curriculum development.
Those teachers, in electrical, plumbing, HVAC and other trades, would then teach green applications alongside traditional skills learned in trade curriculum. Ultimately those students will be able to “green up”, as program leaders call it, the traditional trades as well as train students to go directly into clean energy businesses, like solar panel makers and installers, or building retrofit companies.
“On Cape Cod there are probably three (companies) who have the market cornered. We’re trying to give (the students) tools that they can take to whatever trade they’re going into, whether it be electrical, plumbing, HVAC,” said Paul F. Smith, head of Cape Cod Regional Technical High School in Harwich. “Kids just eat this up out there.”
“The training that’s done at the vocational school level is critical to the pipeline,” said Marybeth Campbell, workforce development program director at the Clean Energy Center. “You get real hands-on training and we can layer on additional training for green jobs.”
Leading the green voke school grant program is Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational Technical High School in Upton, which has incorporated sustainability and renewable energy coursework in its curriculum since it received funding several years ago from the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust, now part of the Clean Energy Center, to incorporate sustainable design and renewable energy into its $36 million expansion project. The 80,000-square-foot addition has five solar arrays and a solar thermal heating system, and was constructed with high-efficiency building materials.
“When people asked why we did this, we said we could showcase to our students that we cared about energy efficiency — and since we train future employees, we would encourage them to incorporate green building techniques into their respective trades,” said Michael Fitzpatrick, superintendent-director of Valley Tech.
“The challenge is for us to orient educators and make them aware of the greening of all of the trades,” he said.
The green-training grant program, known as EnSAVE (Energy Solutions Accentuating Vocational Education), is designed to help those teachers learn clean energy skills in building efficiency, solar photovoltaics and solar thermal systems so they can then incorporate those skills into the curriculum. The grant calls for the voke schools to work with local cleantech businesses to identify key skills and bring in industry professionals to teach the teachers.
Leo Bedard, manager and facilitator of the voke grant program, has been advocating for green trade education for 30 years as an instructor at Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical School in Bourne. Now retired from active teaching, he is focused on a smooth transfer of knowledge from the field into the classroom.
“The job market is tough out there, and yet you have a student that can open up an entirely new business to a company. That student is going to be an asset to their employer,” Bedard said. “(Students) rely totally on their technical instructors to learn what they need to know. … We have to keep our eye on the job market because we’re held accountable for placement in jobs.”
Blackstone Valley is also serving as a staff development hub for vocational teachers across the state, along with Greater Lawrence Technical School in Andover, Tri-County Regional Technical School in Franklin and Bay Path Regional Technical School in Charlton. Last month, some 45 educators came to Valley Tech for a session led by Bedard on developing green programs in schools
There are challenges to the statewide effort to green up voke curricula, however. First is identifying what the labor needs are and what skills are important to those jobs and then developing standardized curricula to teach those skills. EnSAVE will focus on electrical instructors first, teaching photovoltaic skills to be incorporated into curricula, Fitzpatrick said.
Then there are the capital costs associated with adding green-skills training. Equipment like blower-door test kits to teach weatherization techniques or biodiesel processing equipment can cost thousands of dollars, which many schools do not have thanks to budget cuts. So schools are trying to solicit grants and outside support to buy the tools, as well as share equipment with neighboring schools.
But if these programs overcome those challenges, they have the potential to draw a new class of students to vocational education.
“The students, they don’t miss a beat. They want and need training in green skills. They realize they need it and can build upon that in their careers,” Fitzpatrick said.
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