Senator Chris Coons and employees from Bloom Energy's new Newark plant stopped by Delcastle High School Thursday for a look at how the vocational school is training students for in demand jobs and careers.
Coons tried his hand at gas metal arc welding, then chatted with students and answered questions about manufacturing jobs available in the state.
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"If we want to grow manufacturing in this country, we have to be educating our young people not just of the future but of today,” Coons said. “And those jobs are available in Newark, Delaware at Bloom Energy, they’re also available up and down the state at a dozen different manufacturing firms that I’ve visited this year that say their single biggest constraint to growth is needing more skilled workers.”
Coons added that means the vocational education path is one that often leads to career success.
“We have a skills gap in this country and we have many, many unfilled jobs because we don’t have enough young people coming out of high school ready to enter the world of work," Coons said. "Delaware’s Vo-tech schools do a great job of bridging that gap.”
Andrew Davidson, a manufacturing engineer at Bloom Energy, says there’s a clear connection between skills learned at schools like Delcastle and jobs at Bloom.
“We do share quite a lot of the same equipment, quite a lot of the same techniques,” Davidson said. “I don’t think any two welding jobs are exactly the same, but it definitely gives them a background in what we’re doing and what we need if they were to join the company.”
Bloom’s employees said they have several open welding positions with the company and valuable skills that the students are learning in the shops easily translate to the real applications in the field.
Welding instructor Len Graves says he hopes encouragement from Coons and current Bloom employees makes an impression on his students.
“To see a company like that come in and take an interest maybe that’ll spark more interest in the students,” Graves said, “and to hear them talk about ‘You really need to practice, practice, practice,’ maybe they’ll stay at it a little bit longer.”