Before Wednesday, Azaryia Dale, an eighth-grader at B.F. Liddell Middle School in Noxubee County, had plans to become a nurse after high school.
But after attending the FORGE Your Path Career Expo, Dale is rethinking her plans and considering a trade career. The hard part now, she said, is picking which one.
“It’s just been interesting … how hard it is to work in this field, and it shows me that anybody can do anything without (a four-year degree),” Dale told The Dispatch. “… I wanted to be a nurse. Now this has changed my whole perspective on everything.”
Dale was one of about 2,200 eighth-graders set to cycle through the at East Mississippi Community College’s Communiversity during the two-day expo that started Wednesday. About 50 trade partners and more than $19 million worth of heavy equipment filled the campus for the interactive skilled trades expo.
The event aims to bridge the gap between industry by giving students direct access to skilled trade professionals. Students tried their hands at a range of activities for the first day, from operating heavy equipment simulators to laying bricks and interacting with robot dogs.
Founded in 2018 as Family Organizations Recruiting Great Employees to represent its five founding members – Burns Dirt, McCrary-West Construction, Graham Roofing, APAC and West Brothers Construction – FORGE has expanded to include other area businesses such as PACCAR.
Now in its sixth year, FORGE Executive Director Melinda Lowe said the organization is starting to see returns in the area workforce.
“This year, our companies in this area are starting to hire students who have been through the expo,” Lowe told The Dispatch on Wednesday. “We’re starting to see that workforce pipeline is growing, and we’re helping to grow these students to where they are learning and getting training and getting hired locally.
“… All of a sudden, the businesses are like, ‘Oh, we see it now. We see what FORGE is trying to do,’” she added. “They’re getting to hire good, great, employable adults.”
Alan Hall, an instructor in EMCC’s Construction Engineering Technology program, said he’s seeing the same returns in his classroom.
“(The expo) has grown a lot, (an) awesome program as far as introducing these young minds to construction and the industry world,” Hall told The Dispatch. “… I actually have four students this year that came to the expo when they were eighth-graders.”
While it’s taken some years for that first cohort of eighth-graders who attended the expo to graduate, the expo still carries an immediate impact for students.
Sara Knighten, an English teacher at West Point High School, which houses eighth-graders in the district, attended the expo Wednesday with a group of students for the third consecutive year. Within a couple of days after the event each year, students start asking questions about pursuing trade careers, she said.
“It really gets the kids out to see what opportunities are there and what EMCC and companies around here have to offer and kind of help them forge a career path that they may not otherwise have thought about,” Knighten told The Dispatch.
It’s that aspect – introducing young students to careers to which they may have never otherwise been exposed – is what inspired Seth Martin, a second year electrical student at the Communiversity and an EMCC ambassador, to return as an expo guide for students.
“I like handing out with the kids, kind of giving back and doing something for them that maybe nobody else got to do – getting to (show them) all the cool stuff and equipment they have here and the robotics and all of that.”
Hayden Nickels, a journeyman lineman for 4-County Electric Power Association, manned a station where students could practice tying in a conductor to a power line while also learning about the proper equipment lineman use in the field.
This is Nickels’ second year participating in the expo, an opportunity he said students didn’t have when he was planning his career. He said he’s seen students’ interest in the industry grow as they learn about different careers they “would have never known about.”
“You have more students now ask questions that they would be in fear (of asking) or not know how to ask,” Nickels said. “… I wouldn’t have asked those questions a long time ago. I think this is a really good thing. There’s just so many eye opening things. They can get an idea of what they want to do or don’t want to do.”
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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