THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 4, 1994 TAG: 9412040044
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH THIEL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DEARBORN, MICH. LENGTH: Long : 170 lines
Seventeen-year-old Scott Laudan took one look at the small bolt he was ordered to inspect as an intern at an auto parts engineering company and figured he was in for a long, boring summer.
He figured wrong. That little bolt had to meet a 22-point list of specifications before Scott could give it his stamp of approval.
From the bolt, he went on to inspect parts for new Mitsubishi convertibles and components for other types of cars. If the parts didn't meet his quality checklist, they were rejected, even if it meant holding up automobile production or incurring the wrath of the older, vastly better-educated engineers who ran the plant.
It was a heady revelation for a bright youth who'd grown up in the backyard of the big three automakers but had never even considered working for them after college. The internship showed him that success didn't have to mean becoming a doctor or a lawyer. He now wants to be an engineer.
Scott's opportunity is one that Virginia Beach leaders hope to offer to high school students in their city as early as next year.
Two City Council members, two high school principals, a high school teacher and the city's director of technical and career education traveled to Michigan last week.
They visited Scott and other students enrolled in the Ford Academy of Manufacturing Sciences, which Fordofficials call FAMS. It's a two-year program Ford Motor Co. and other companies sponsor to teach high school juniors and seniors about the wide world of business and manufacturing.
Students who complete the academy's four courses, each a semester long, are expected to have a long list of skills, from teamwork and public speaking to physics and statistical data-gathering techniques.
Ideally, all would have had paid internships after their junior years. And when they graduate from high school, they would be prepared to go directly to work, to other job-training programs or to college.
``What FAMS does for you is never having to say, `Would you like fries with that, sir?' '' said Dave Roberts, one of Scott's teachers at the academy at Fordson High School in Dearborn.
Four years after the first academy opened in Michigan, Ford has 35 set up in high schools around the country. Another 23 schools are training to begin the program in the fall. Virginia Beach is preparing to become the 24th, and the first Ford Academy site in Virginia.
Some school officials and council members see the academy as a way to give students better training for the competitive world they'll encounter when they leave high school. They also see the prospect of highly trained workers as a sure-fire way to lure new companies to the area.
``The skills you learn in FAMS are not just for application at Ford,'' said the company's Lawrence A. Bruno, manager of the academy program. ``We feel they're applicable in any industry.''
Patrick M. Konopnicki, director of technical and career education for Virginia Beach city schools, said the plan so far is to set up pilot academies at three high schools - Bayside, Kellam and Salem - with the Bayside academy eventually being moved into a proposed technical center to be built near the high school in the next two to three years. The number of students who would be accepted into each academy has not been determined.
The school board has not yet reviewed the idea for the technical school and academies.
The program's cost would be borne mostly by the school system, which would have to provide some regular classroom space and, ideally, four teachers, an internship placement coordinator and a guidance counselor to run the academy at each school.
The school system would pay Ford for the training, $4,000 for each group of six staff members. Ford also would sell the schools the course materials for $4,000 for a classroom of 25 students. The school system would have to buy a $500 computer software package for each school.
Ford provides two full-time staff members to assist schools with the program, plus a newsletter to help the academies keep in touch.
Beyond that, however, the school system would be on its own to organize the academy, recruit kids and find businesses willing to advise the academy staff and give students paid internships.
Promising as the Ford academies appear to be, Virginia Beach officials saw some gaps during their visit Thursday to Fordson High and Athens High in Troy, Mich.
Track record: Students in the academies are supposed to learn that a vital part of running a successful business is collecting data to measure whether certain practices are working.
Four years after the program began, however, Ford's academy coordinators and staff members at participating schools are doing little to measure whether their own program is working. A survey of students in the program, which began in 1991, has not been concluded.
Ford's Bruno said confidentiality rules about student records prevent them from gathering information such as students' grade point averages or progress after high school.
Bruno said he relies on testimonials from teachers and students, who rave about the program.
Konopnicki and other representatives from Virginia Beach said they would find a way to measure the local program's progress. Some possibilities were looking at students' grade point averages, attendance and behavior before and after the academy, surveying businesses about academy graduates and keeping track of how many kids get internships or use the program after high school.
``If you don't measure it, how do you know you're doing a good job?'' said Virginia Beach City Council member Nancy Parker.
Proven skills: A tour guide at Ford's engine-making plant in Romeo, Mich., laid out a harsh reality: People who do not have industry certifications proving that they have specific skills either do not get hired, or get hired at lower wages than other, more qualified workers.
So far, students who graduate from the academies do not get national certifications showing that they've mastered specific skills.
Konopnicki, who has begun restructuring the Beach's job-training classes to offer graduates professional certification in some fields, said he and the team of business and city leaders who came up with the idea for the new technical school would find a way to offer a professional certification to students who graduate from local Ford academies.
If no national certification program can be found, the certification may just be an official stamp of approval from local businesses.
Otherwise, Konopnicki said, the student who graduates from the academy with an `A' will be no better off than the student who graduates with a `D.'
Internship availability: At Fordson High last summer, 22 of the 32 students eligible for paid internships got them.
Fordson's Roberts considered them lucky. In a Detroit metropolitan area with a population of 2 million, and many young people competing for scarce summer jobs, his students went up against the best.
Internships provide the only hands-on training in the academy programs. Without real work experience, Roberts said, the courses are just academic.
``Unless you get the business community involved, you're going to fail,'' he said. ``The kids need to see how organizations work.
``Maybe it'll work in Virginia Beach,'' Roberts said, because the area is smaller and more tightknit.
City and school officials already have begun tapping local businesses to help set up the program and beef up existing job-training programs in schools.
Ford officials also recommended unpaid internships or time spent shadowing professionals for students who could not find internships. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
JEFF A. KOWALSKY/Associated Press
Patrick Konopnicki, rear, Virginia Beach's director of technical and
career education, observes a Ford Academy class at Athens High in
Troy, Mich. The students, from left, are Dawn Sikora, Brian Hall Jr.
and Nick Morgowicz.
Graphic
What Virginia Beach students would learn in the two-year Ford
Academy of Manufacturing Sciences:
Course 1 - The World of Manufacturing:
Introduction to manufacturing
Principles of economics
History of manufacturing
Manufacturing systems
Manufacturing processes
Measuring quality
Careers in manufacturing
Course 2 - Statistical Methods for Manufacturing Quality:
Introduction to statistics
Describing data
Displaying data
Quality tools
Relationships between data
Course 3 - Workplace Technologies and Applications:
Introduction to technology
Manufacturing technology
Materials
Energy
The environment
Other technologies
Course 4 - Case Studies in Manufacturing:
Introduction
Solving problems and making decisions
Problems in the business world
A case study project
by CNB