“Find Your Future”: Creators Wanted Arrives in Freeport, TX

If you want to make a good living, help change the world for the better and have a good time doing it, modern manufacturing has a job for you. That was the message relayed to local high school students this Tuesday at the premier event of the Creators Wanted Tour Live’s seventh stop, in the Freeport, Texas, area.

Inspiring students: The CW tour, a joint project of the NAM and its workforce development and education partner, The Manufacturing Institute, aims to inspire, educate and empower tomorrow’s workforce.

• For this week’s tour stop, presented by Dow, the immersive mobile experience came to Brazosport Independent School District’s Career and Technical Education Center in Clute, Texas.
• The CTE Center, which is located near Dow’s largest manufacturing facility in the world, strives to prepare students for careers in a global economy by emphasizing career and technical education.
• “We believe that the future of our workforce is highly dependent on the quality of public education,” said Brazosport Independent School District Superintendent Danny Massey.

Seeking difference makers: Dow Senior Vice President of Operations, Manufacturing and Engineering John Sampson highlighted the numerous opportunities available in modern manufacturing to do interesting, well-paid, life-changing work.

• “I hope some of you—all of you—will be creators,” Sampson told students at the kickoff event. “At this point in your lives, you’re probably thinking about what you might want to major in. … I’m sure some of you might be interested in making some money, [too,] but you probably want to do more than that.”
• “You probably want to make the world a better place, create something people want [and] have some fun. … I promise you this: We’ll always have a place for you on our team.”

Filling a void: Before the students rushed off to complete their “race to the future” in the mobile experience, MI President Carolyn Lee laid it out for them: Creators aren’t just wanted—they’re sorely needed to keep the world running and advancing.

• “Without a steady stream of talented, bright young people … we can’t keep up the good work of continuously making our products,” Lee said. “[But] this is not a get-one-job-and-stay-there-for-40-years [situation]. This is a choose-your-own-adventure [career path] with continuing skills and challenges and opportunities and learning along the way.”
• There are currently more than 850,000 open manufacturing jobs, Lee said, and by the end of this decade, modern manufacturing will require an additional 4 million workers.

Find your future: “We’re here because we know there’s something for everybody in manufacturing,” Sampson told event attendees in his closing remarks. “We hope you will find your future in modern manufacturing.”

• Dow Vice President of Operations for the Gulf Coast Fernando Signorini echoed his colleague’s sentiment at a Creators Spotlight panel later on Tuesday. “If your desire is to go and get an education in engineering, you’re going to have a lot of opportunities,” he said.
• “If your desire is to have a technical degree, [you’re] going to have a lot of opportunities. For a company like Dow to work, we need all the different … diversities in education and degrees. You see everything in there.”

The impact: More than 750 students are expected to tour the mobile experience this week at the CTE Center, and more than 25,000 students and career mentors in the Houston-metro area have already signed up online to learn more about modern manufacturing careers as a result of this latest tour stop.

This article originally appeared in the National Association of Manufacturers’ morning newsletter for manufacturing executives, Input.