David Newton isn’t just looking for technicians to fill out his ranks in The Manufacturing Collaborative (TMC), he’s looking for the right students. Specifically, those with the initiative to ask for the work and to seek out opportunities. As the interim director of TMC, he’s focused on developing the learner and in turn, the worker and the innovator. “When you serve students, you serve the industry,” he said. “It’s about the workforce. Develop a student and that’s the key to helping companies solve problems with their own employees or their own items.”
The Manufacturing Collaborative is housed at Vermont State University’s Randoph campus and was established to develop world-class advanced manufacturing solutions and the manufacturing workforce of the future through using leading-edge technologies. The team includes a handful of students working in additive, subtractive, and quality control.
What David’s looking for most in the technicians he hires is self-motivation. “Work opportunities are up to the student’s initiative,” he noted. “We do some work with them, but they’re getting out of it what they put into it. It’s a lesson for life after graduation. If you want that great job or that interesting opportunity, you have to seek it out.”
Jon Ferguson, senior engineer at TMC and mentor of the student technicians, added, “all of our student employees are members of the team. It says something that we scramble every time one graduates.”
“They tell us they hire us for a reason,” Isabella DeCandio, a senior in the Mechanical Engineering program and TMC technician from Rutland, Vermont shared. “Immersion into the industry, the way we are at TMC prepares us for life after graduation. There’s a technical language and way of speaking to each other and about projects that you only get from work experience. Wholly understanding that is something you only get on the job.”
Isabella’s role at TMC is quality control. “Her attention to detail is unmatched,” Jon noted. “She’s a fantastic student and a valued employee. We rely on her skills and perspective to help ensure that the parts we produce meet our standards and the customers’ specifications. The same is true of every member of our team: our student technicians are fully integrated into the work, and we expect them to contribute their perspectives, ask questions, and participate in an ongoing dialogue.”
Her experience, focused on problem solving and hands-on work, helped Isabella build out her skillset over several years. She came to Vermont State University a few years after high school after working for several years in manufacturing as an assembler. She started working at TMC as a sophomore and is now entering her senior year at Vermont State. Throughout, she’s had the opportunity to attend conferences and speak at trade shows. And, this summer, she worked at a paid internship in the calibration lab at BETA Technologies in South Burlington, an electric aerospace company.
It’s an internship she secured, in part, through the networking skills she honed working for TMC.
Sarah DeShaw, workforce development specialist at BETA, first met Isabella at an event at Generator Makerspace, where she was representing TMC. “She immediately stood out as a strong prospect for our Quality Team—not only because of her experience, but because of the thoughtful questions she asked about BETA and our internship program,” she said. “We stayed connected as she moved through the application process and were ultimately able to find a team where she could quite literally contribute from day one.”
Isabella worked full time in the calibration lab, helping to set it up and test processes and measures. “BETA made sure I had work that was important and impactful,” Isabella added. “I came in right as they were trying to stand up an internal calibration lab and I was able to be very involved in that work.”
That immersion into the aerospace industry fueled Isabella’s growing interest in a potential aerospace career after graduation. She knows she wants to continue doing quality engineering and found the application to the aerospace industry highly interesting.
She is excited to pursue what’s next, but she does intend to finish out her senior year and earn her diploma first. She’s picked up her quality control technician role back up in TMC’s lab this year and will be balancing that with her coursework, as she has for the last few years.
“Isabella is a great example of the tremendous value VTSU students bring to the table,” added Sarah. “We’re committed at BETA to creating more opportunities to connect with talented students like her, build relationships early, and strengthen the pipeline between VTSU and BETA’s internship and career opportunities.”
Pursuing mechanical engineering was the right choice for her, she shared. and Vermont State University was the right place for her to get the valuable education – and experiences – that will continue cracking open the doors that her initiative and self-motivation will widen far into the future.