- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- Expanding and improving the workforce in Memphis, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I am Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm joined tonight by three people running different organizations within the U of M that are focused on workforce development training in various angles.

First up is Stephanie Ivey, she's Director of the Southeast Transportation Workforce Center.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you for having me.

- Diane Pabich is Director of Upskill Mid-South, which is again, also based at the U of M. Thanks for being here.

- Thank you.

- And Robert Garrett is Dean of the Fogelman College of Business at the University of Memphis.

- Yeah, thanks for having me.

- Absolutely.

I'll do first off, just, and I'll start with you maybe Stephanie, and just give me, you know, give us the 30-second kind of version of what you do and we'll talk more about workforce, the challenges, the opportunities, the impact and so on.

But talk about what your specific center does.

- Absolutely.

So the Southeast Transportation Workforce Center is part of the national network for the transportation workforce.

So we're one of four centers across the country that works collaboratively to really help move the needle related to transportation workforce issues.

- Okay, Diane?

- Thank you for asking.

So I oversee the Upskill Mid-South Economic Development Administration grant.

It's a $21.5 million grant.

And my day to day operations is to lead a regional education training based off of sector partnership where employers lead in the Tri-states to ensure that we are producing accelerated skills training in manufacturing, transportation logistics technology and construction.

- Okay.

And Robert?

- Yeah, so I'm the Dean of the Fogelman College of Business and Economics.

We serve traditionally somewhere around 3,500, 3,600 students in total enrollment.

Our goal is to create and share new knowledge on businesses and to create opportunities for our students.

- So different sort of places in the whole notion of workforce, right?

And and maybe I'll go, you've been in Memphis for 20 years, Diane here is what, a year plus in, and 15 months in for Robert.

But for you, Stephanie, since I've been here, people talk about challenges of workforce.

You know, we have more jobs than we have people.

It can be a limiting factor, be negative, but it can be a limiting factor in terms of what kind of businesses relocate.

A lot of that has changed, but still those challenges are what, in terms of this region's workforce and how, again, more specifically, do you all try to get in there and get people where they need to be?

Whether they are students coming outta school or they're people trying to move forward in their careers or they are people trying to change their careers?

- Well, I think the challenges that we really see, partly because a lot of the occupations that we're looking at are STEM related, are really just awareness and interest, generating the interest early enough in a student's educational pathway because they really need to know about these things as early as elementary school and start building that mindset of this is something that I can do, this is something that I can be, so that they are making those choices as they get into middle school and then into high school that set them up for success down the road.

- And is it also that these jobs pay a lot more than they might realize?

- Absolutely, I think that's one of the critical things, but then also, it's just helping them to understand that there's such a diverse array of opportunities in the transportation industry, you know?

So there's so many things you can do.

- Yeah, same for you Diane.

I've been in things before, presentations before, where people talk about, you know, welding, you know, and you can make really significant income as a welder.

And my uncle was a welder.

When I was a kid, he did not make a significant income.

People who worked in factories.

Factory work is very different now than what maybe I thought of, we thought of, as factory work back in the day.

Is that part, as Stephanie said, part of just the whole process is introducing some, excuse me, some of these jobs to people and what they really mean, not maybe what their perception is?

- Well that's a big portion of it, you know, changing that mindset and really introducing these accelerated type of possibilities, right?

Versus the non-traditional educational without losing the non-traditional value of the model.

So the way my Upskill Mid-South actually operates, I utilize and leverage a framework.

It's a national best practice on sector partnerships where industry actually leads at the table, education, training, workforce development, and economic development to really talk about those skills gap that are impacting the specific jobs today and tomorrow.

And so it's through that collective group that we're able to have here the voice of industry to really describe what the skills they need, where we are moving in the future, and how best to really engage and recruit those individuals, whether it's a student, whether it is an incumbent worker, a detached employee, unemployed individual, or whether it's a business coming into to talk about here's what I'm looking for and what I need.

So it's a portion of what was just described in terms of creating that awareness for individuals.

But it's really having industry lead the conversation now, which is non-traditional.

Whereas before we used to say, here's what we need to do.

But now it's having industry talk about how do we bridge these skills gaps?

Here is what we're seeing and how do we create one collective voice and design a curriculum that meets their needs today and tomorrow in a short accelerated timeframe to provide that wage and that sustainability for an individual in this economy.

- And is it, the training, is that training come, it may vary.

Does that training come from the employer?

So in the sense what you're trying to do is help recruit, find and funnel people to them for the training?

Or is it that you, these industries saying here's what we need, find some group or company or organization to do that training?

- Great question.

So based off of the Upskill Mid-South, our strategy and framework is a sector partnership and it's a leading national best practice.

And the approach is TPM: talent pipeline management.

And so again, it's a private-public-type of relationship where we host monthly meetings with employer-led, the individual is a chair of the industry of a single industry and we bring education in and we look at current curriculum or we develop micro-credentialing if there is not the curriculum based on an employer vetting it and identifying that specific skill set that they need to advance their productivity or to actually have that talent skill management within their organization.

And then once we train them, they turn around and make the commitment to hire or actually add new jobs to their company.

And so that has been a lot of our work.

It's a best practice.

And we have implemented that here at the University of Memphis.

- And Robert, people maybe who are listening who went to business school 20, 30 years ago or have a friend or a spouse or somebody who went may think, well, I get what he does, I get business.

You go for four years, there's studying, there's tests, then you go out.

- Sure.

- How is it different than maybe the perception?

How is business school now, generally at U of M obviously, than it used to be?

- Yeah, so actually there are some misperceptions out there about what a business degree can do for people.

And two of the critical areas that Memphis needs more of is in accountancy and in supply chain management.

And the reason for that is these perceptions still persist where young people think, "I don't wanna be an accountant."

That that sounds boring to them.

They imagine a green visor and a little calculator with the reel of paper spinning off of it.

But accounting is information systems and data analytics.

In our country right now, there are about 126,000 jobs annually for accountants.

But our universities are producing 73,000 graduates in accountancy.

So the gap is huge and it's acutely felt in Memphis.

That's what all of our corporate and community partners have been telling me is we have to change this narrative with the young people to understand that accounting is exciting and it provides a guaranteed income because of that shortage.

Similarly with a lot of our young people, they hear supply chain management.

And until the pandemic hit, nobody knew what supply chain management was, right?

Now we know what it is, but there's still this misperception of I don't wanna work in a warehouse.

I don't wanna drive a forklift or a truck.

And again, supply chain management is AI, it's exciting stuff.

And so we're trying to make sure that our young people know that there is a great route through a business school to secure those jobs.

- The accountancy thing is fascinating for me just 'cause my kids are 26 and 25, so have graduated from college.

And so as they and their peers were going into college, there were all these friends of theirs and kids I've known since they were very little who suddenly were getting these incredible offers.

I mean, it was like, like we're joking about not talking about sports with the all the U of M people, but it was kind, it felt like sports, like people getting these incredible internships and getting a master's degree in five years, not four.

And then getting these incredible jobs, often meaning you get on a plane and you're traveling the country for one of the big accounting firms, but these are not, these are not stereotypical kids who are, I shouldn't say kids, but young men and women that you would think becoming the green visor, kind of dull accounting.

These were great kids I'd known forever.

- High achievers.

- High achievers.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- Because of all that demand.

So that's one thing, it's just interesting to me.

Two, that national demand and the gap.

Where does that come from?

- Oh, well we've been seeing this demographic cliff hitting us.

President Hardgrave spoke about this on this show several months ago.

So there's simply 15-16% fewer young people in this generation that's rising after the recession of 2007, 2008.

But a lot of it has to do not only with the demographic cliff itself, but with this lack of interest and lack of understanding about the opportunities in those areas.

- Beyond, well, I'll come back to you.

And Stephanie, the jobs that that you're working for, are they tend to be four year degree type positions or are they more certificate?

Are they somewhere in between?

Like, talk about that landscape of what sort of requirements and training and education and credentials people need?

- It's that whole spectrum.

So a lot of the work that we do is really research based.

And so we're looking at how are these occupations shifting, what new occupations are coming into the industry, especially given all of the technology that Bobby was just talking about.

You know, there's so many things that students can do now and so many roles that haven't even been created yet.

You know, and I think that's one of the things that's so exciting about transportation is that, you know, you could literally be and do anything that you want through that pathway.

A lot of the work that we do is focused on engineering, of course, 'cause I'm in the Herff College of Engineering.

And so we're a very similar situation where we have way more demand for engineers than we have supply.

But I think one of the critical pieces to that is really helping students find their fit.

And I think that's one of the things that I'm really proud of in terms of the work that we're all doing at the University of Memphis and align with our strategic plan, is helping bring in students where they are and helping them find their fit so that they're prepared for the workforce and the industry when they leave.

- I don't know who would take this, but I listened to something recently about the shortage in trucking nationally, the truck drivers.

Is that more in your bucket or in your bucket?

I don't know.

- I think both of our ours.

It overlaps.

- It's a staggering number.

- Right.

- And it's also, I think, and this may be a mischaracterization, it's a very difficult one because it's a very hard job.

There's a lot of tedium, and it's not great for your health just to sit and do that.

How do you deal with, unlike say, modern work in a factory or modern work welding, there's like a lot of traditional trades that are actually much more interesting than I think people realize.

The truck driving thing, which is obviously hugely important in Memphis, America's distribution center.

How do you tackle that in terms of addressing the needs there?

- Yeah, that's a great question.

So one of the things we do, we created a campaign with the employers, a strategy that really talks about how do we make it more sexy, right?

How do we entice individuals who are out of the workforce system or who do not want to go on that long traditional track of education who need to get into the workforce?

And so with that said, we actually provide internships, we provide actual earn and learn opportunities and we also do tours.

So within the Tri-states, we have a campaign where we go and visit within each of the regions.

In Tennessee I have 21 counties.

In Mississippi I have 14 counties.

And in Arkansas I have nine.

Is that 42?

Maybe I, okay.

- 100%, 100%.

- I may have added an extra county in there somewhere.

But with that said, the really important thing is we bring together a campaign that really shows and illustrates here's what to expect when you take this role on.

Not only will it give you a sustainable wage with benefits and worker voice, but what it will do, it will connect you to X, Y, and Z.

And so you get to actually spend a day in the life of that individual's shoes to really see what that job is like.

So the electric vehicle production technician.

Ford opened their doors.

I went in and we actually got to tour and test the tools and we got to go through the production lane and actually use an arm.

When we went through the CDL truck driving, we actually got to go in behind the scenes and actually navigate a simulator to see how we could drive that, which I don't recommend that on anyone 'cause you can actually get dizzy.

So, but you get the picture.

We really tried to make it sexy.

We tried to make it inviting.

We tried to make sure that it's real, that you are actually touching and feeling what you could potentially do as a career.

And then we provide opportunity to continually build off of that career.

So then you can go and get another industry credential that will elevate and advance you in that transportation department.

- Is that a thing?

You know, people talk about this generation, like my kids' generation, that they will change jobs and really almost change professions far more than than my generation and the generation before that.

So how do you address that with people coming into business school and saying, you know, you talked some about accounting, but maybe some of the other focuses that people might have that you're gonna bounce around and that's fine.

- Yeah, you're right.

Changing jobs is completely destigmatized.

My father's generation was the type of generation that stuck with the company for at least 30 years and retired from that company.

And I've changed jobs, right?

I started with a large energy company in Texas and decided I want to go back and become a professor.

And the first conversation I had with my dad is, he said, "That's crazy.

Why would you do that?"

Right?

But he's been completely supportive and very happy and proud of all this.

- Yeah, sure.

- But that is the model now is that we do change jobs.

So we've been creating a speaker series in the Fogelman College called "What It Takes" where we bring in successful alumni and executives to talk to our students about how they navigate a career path.

How you create a brand for yourself, how you manage your career, how you take advantage of opportunities in ways that don't alienate your prior organization, but allow you to continue making progress in your career.

So yeah, we're very conscientious about that and communicate to our students, you will have to navigate a path.

- I'll stay with you for a second.

I'm curious, you know, again, partly, I mean we all, COVID was just this huge, you know, life change for all of us, we're however many years past it, college, the college experience was dramatically impacted.

You were at Louisville?

- That's right.

- At that time?

- I was, yeah.

- What do you see now with students coming in, with students who've maybe been, you know, maybe they're sophomores or juniors.

- Yeah.

- There's still these lingering impacts of COVID.

- Absolutely.

And I'm so glad you asked that question.

So it's changed dramatically.

A lot of our students and a lot of students nationwide are still persisting in some online classes, even when they're on campus, even when they're in residence on campus.

Now at the Fogelman College, we're gonna continue offering online classes because serving this community, we have a unique set of customers that we need to provide services for.

People who are working part-time or even full-time jobs and need those online classes so they can take coursework on their own time.

But for those students, and I've got children and nephews who are in college, those students who are able to come to class, who are on campus and could be there, we're doing our utmost to encourage them to come back.

Because what I have our community of employers telling me is in order to be successful in their career, they need to have communication skills.

They need to be engaged, they need to be present.

Online classes are still a big part of what we're doing post-COVID, but we're trying to encourage people to come back.

- Do y'all, I'm focused on you, but I guess maybe a question to everyone.

I mean, I think we've had enough people on from K through 12, pre-K through 12, we did a couple weeks ago with the impacts of COVID, but I think the data's pretty clear that it was really bad.

It was not good.

The learning, the falling behind, the learning loss, this is not a Memphis problem, this is a national problem, an international problem.

Do you see that at the college level too?

That students fell behind?

- I see it getting better.

It was really difficult for a few years there.

But the rising seniors now, the people who are entering college as freshmen, even the sophomores and juniors that we're seeing, that mindset is coming back where they're tuned in and they've also been educated properly and they've put in the work in the classroom to be ready.

- Maybe more the two of you, working with high school kids, do y'all work in, I think reaching in to kids when they're young people, when they're 15 and 16, and they're maybe not college bound in the sense of they're gonna go get a four-year degree, maybe not even a two-year degree.

How do you meet that student, that young person where they are and say, "Hey, here are all these paths."

- So I think one of the things that's really important is for them to understand that all of these opportunities are things that can provide you with a fantastic lifestyle and career.

It's figuring out what it is that you're really passionate about and what you feel comfortable doing and what aligns with the work-life balance that you want down the road that's really important.

And so with students, for instance, we do a summer transportation academy program that we run each year, and it's for middle and high school kids.

And so we're bringing in speakers who are not only from, you know, let's say an engineering role, but also people who are in frontline roles, in various occupations within transportation so that they can see, you know, it's not just this, I could do all of these other things and if I choose one thing, it doesn't mean I have to do that forever.

I can also do that and that could lead to this and then I can go here and, you know, so they start to understand that it's really an entry point and you have lots of on and off ramps for training and certification and education throughout that career.

- It's interesting, you know, that all this is housed at U of M, I mean, I think there was, I mean, I know when I grew up in a very big blue collar city, big blue collar kind of public high school.

And there were the sort of, there was a stigma with not going to college, right?

But U of M is known as a four-year college with graduate programs.

But you're talking about all this thing of not everyone.

And I think President Hardgrave talked about it to some extent when he was on the show some months ago.

People can get that at WKNO.org or YouTube.

That there's this generational shift that we all need to embrace.

Not everyone, four year college is not for everyone.

Right?

- He did speak to that, President Hardgrave, and if you listen to his voice, he wanted to make sure that there was no gaps transitioning from one educational institution to another educational institution.

And so by bringing these innovative type of possibilities to students, we can today provide them an opportunity to get into a short-term accelerated training to build off of those skills and continue their learning by providing, as you mentioned earlier, all those resources that an individual can take advantage of or actually understand that they're available to them.

And so one of the things we do in our Upskill Mid-South program is really provide a mentorship or an internship so you actually can see and spend the day with you, "How do you do this?

What do you do?

Why do you do this?"

you know?

And we also provide earn and learn, as I mentioned earlier, and we have employers engaged who are providing mentorships.

So not only are we providing you a plethora of resources and different on-ramps and off-ramps to really gain the skills you need today and in the future that employers are looking for, that we have this huge skills gap, right?

But it's really how to help you be, ensure that you are on a track to continuous learning and creating a career pathway for you.

And so we do provide access and all types of resources for that individual and an understanding of them and follow up continually with them.

- I had the, I'm talking about this all just reminds me of the my age of my children, so I'm talking about 'em too much today.

But I had the experience of my son who spent four years in engineering at USC and is a programmer.

We should all be programmers because it's very in demand or we should be accountants or all these jobs.

But he's a programmer.

And he said to me a year or so after he graduated, he goes, "Oh dad, I could really do my job with just like a, you know, six month like coding program."

And I was like, thanks for telling me that now.

You know?

There were all these other things though he got out of it.

He didn't just do programming, he also took literature classes and all these other things and he learned all this stuff.

He was kind of messing with me.

But it was true.

I mean, he does work side by side with programmers who've done six-month programs or programming courses or less.

Where does that fit into the business school?

- As a quick elaboration on that, we just had a distinguished alumnus of the Fogelman College share with us in our Fogelman Focus magazine, education is the one thing that nobody can ever take away from you.

Right?

It's incredibly important that our citizenry becomes educated so they can be qualified for these jobs.

Yeah.

So I think it's terribly important, you know, as long as we don't take this narrative of college isn't for everybody to that one step further that is college isn't necessary, right?

And that's become part of the mainstream narrative these days.

But the Wall Street Journal just published an article about two or three months ago highlighting the lifetime earnings gains that are still there, that are still very measurable and significant over a person's lifetime.

And to my great satisfaction, the Wall Street Journal also published in there, if you really want to be, get the most out of your college education, go to a publicly funded state institution.

Here we are.

- Here we are.

- And get a degree in business or engineering.

- Yeah.

- Right?

That's the best way to get value for your education.

- I do think, and I think I talked to President Hardgrave, I talked to his predecessor David Rudd many times about how many kids are really gonna be able to go to colleges that cost 80, 90, $100,000 a year.

- Exactly.

- And what that, and especially for a declining pool of incoming students and you've got these really great public institutions that are a fraction of that.

It's just an interesting dynamic.

- Right.

And that's one of the things we offer, that's our sponsorship's at 100%, right, if you qualify.

So not only am I looking at underemployed and unemployed, but I'm also looking at those incumbent workers who are currently working, who are in jobs that are only working 30 hours an hour or make less than $20.

Or you're in a company that you have not been able to advance 'cause you lack the skills or you need to re-skill yourself so you can move into another occupation.

And so with that said, to your point is the Aspen Institute did a huge research study on the various type of occupations and in demand skills needed.

And one of my jobs that I train in or occupations is the in industrial maintenance automation or the industrial maintenance technician position, which falls under the engineering department.

Right?

And if you look at the years, to your point, what your son of that engineering track and all the various courses, my curriculum condenses it, creates an accelerated program in six months or less.

Perhaps you don't have the plethora of other type of opportunities of courses, but it gives you that skillset, it gives you that math skill.

It gives you the technique and the technician and the ability to actually land a job working in electric vehicle production technician and being that actual opportunity, person who can actually collaborate it.

Is that correct?

Collaborate the machine.

Yes.

And actually work on it and then continue their education.

- We just a couple minutes left here.

For people who wanna learn more, where do they go to?

- To University of Memphis Upskill Mid-South website.

- And, that's again, a whole range of people might wanna learn more and get this training.

- Absolutely.

- For you?

- University of Memphis website, also SETWC.

- SETWC, okay.

- S-E-T-W-C.

Yes.

- Okay.

I think people know, but Fogelman School.

That one's a little bit more straightforward.

Question for you with a minute left.

How much work do you do with what used to be called, maybe they still are, executive programs?

People who are working, but they want to go get an MBA at night and on the, you know, they don't wanna quit their job and go back to school, but they want that extra training.

Talk about those program.

- Yeah, so the biggest announcement is we're bringing back our executive MBA in August of 2025.

So that'll be a huge program for us and very important to this community.

But we also offer executive education, various workshop series, and graduate certificates in a variety of topics, including supply chain management.

- Okay.

Thank you all.

People can learn more about the programs, again, at the U of M. I appreciate you all being here.

That is all the time we have this week though.

If you missed any of the show, you can go to WKNO.org or YouTube or The Daily Memphian site and get the full video.

You can also get the full audio podcast of the show wherever you get your podcasts, iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, The Daily Memphian, WKNO.

Last week we did an election roundup of local election coverage and we've got coming up, we've rescheduled Police Chief CJ Davis in the next few weeks.

But that is all the time we have this week.

Thanks very much.

We'll see you next week.

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