By Reynolds Hutchins
reynolds.hutchins@insidebiz.com
More than 250 high school students, 26 representatives from manufacturers and industry-related partners and still, the numbers from this year's Manufacturing Day at ECPI can't help but pale in comparison to the 600,000 unfilled manufacturing jobs left in America today.
But ECPI's exposition earlier this month, the first-ever for the for-profit Virginia Beach technical college, is just a cog in the national initiative to boost student interest in manufacturing.
According to a 2013 National Math and Science Initiative report, there are nearly 20 million four-year college graduates with a degree in a science and engineering field. The number of bachelor's degrees in those areas has grown by 19 percent between 2009 and 2013.
It's not as if there isn't an interest in manufacturing, said Paul Dockery, ECPI business development specialist.
But, outdated and often wrong perceptions of manufacturing careers continue to dissuade young students from entering the field.
"Our goal here for Manufacturing Day was to show what manufacturing is, compared to what it isn't," Dockery said at ECPI's first - and potentially annual - expo.
What it isn't, Dockery explained, is a dirty, dingy, dead-end job.
What is it? Manufacturing today, as Dockery put it, is a clean, career-oriented and high-paying field.
Dockery pointed to Virginia Beach chainsaw and power tool manufacturer Stihl, the Peninsula-based NASA Langley Research Center and others that lined the walls of ECPI conference rooms for the day, and also call Hampton Roads their permanent home.
"People don't realize this is a pretty big hotbed for manufacturing whether on the small scale or the large scale, from small employers all the way to 2,000- to 3,000-employee companies," Dockery said.
It's not a problem with education in America. Schools and students are taking to the so-called science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, studies now more than ever.
Manufacturing has a marketing problem.
"I think STEM is being pushed so much," Dockery said, "but students don't always see what manufacturing is, how it's applicable to a career."
NASA, for instance, has a sizable footprint in Hampton Roads. Its Langley Research Center in Hampton is the nation's first NASA field center and employs 3,300 civil service and contract employees.
That comes as a surprise to some people, even some people living in the region, said NASA engineering technician Jake Tury, who manned NASA's booth at the expo.
With 3-D printers buzzing away, building small-scale models of NASA rockets, the booth was a popular attraction for the expo's younger visitors.
"Mostly they're interested in seeing the technology," Tury said. "It's something you hear about quite a bit in the media, but you don't always see it in use."
NASA Langley is often overlooked, he said, as the less glamorous cousin of facilities like the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
"That's why we're big fans of public outreach," Tury said. "We try and get out there and show people, this is what we do, check us out."
If the feedback from students in ECPI's lobby was any indication, that sort of outreach is working.
High school senior Morgan Clemmons came to the expo from Richmond with his robotics team, part of the Virginia FIRST, or For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, program.
Clemmons said promotions and outreach through groups like FIRST and events like Manufacturing Day were the reason he's pursuing a degree and a career in robotics.
"All it takes is generating that interest," he said. "Experience, exposure that's all you need. Once you start in STEM, you get hooked. "Now I actively pursue it every chance I get."
Clemmons was visiting the expo with his friend and robotics teammate Lacey Kelly.
Kelly, who's still in middle school was surprised to hear that women's share of the manufacturing sector is just over 27 percent today.
Her face twisted in confusion after hearing that, for years, women were largely unrepresented or entirely absent from the history book of American engineering.
Kelly, it seems, belongs to a new chapter in that book.
"Oh, it's a lot more open now," she said. "Like, I've always been interested in mechanics and stuff."
Kelly, who is in eighth grade, said she is preparing for a career in robotics.
Check out additional photos and videos from ECPI's 2014 Manufacturing Day on the Inside Business facebook page here.