As president of Augusta Technical College in Georgia, Jermaine Whirl already had partnerships in place with local businesses, government agencies and nonprofit organizations to strengthen workforce development opportunities in his community. But what the city didn’t have, until being named a “Workforce Hub” by the Biden administration, was a cohesive regional strategy involving all major players.
As part of its “Investing in America” agenda to build jobs in industries such as manufacturing, technology and clean energy, the Biden administration in May 2023 designated five U.S. cities as regional Workforce Hubs: Augusta, Baltimore, Columbus, Phoenix and Pittsburgh.
Within each hub, administration officials leveraged their considerable power and expertise to bring all key stakeholders together to establish a common workforce development plan. In Augusta, this plan has focused on creating pathways for people to access high-wage jobs in the clean energy sector in particular.
More opportunities
Bringing everyone to the table to create a shared vision and forge cooperative agreements has made a huge difference, Whirl says. It has led to public and private investments that will eliminate barriers to workforce training and result in numerous opportunities for the area’s residents — including a new apprenticeship program for a local nuclear energy company that will guarantee jobs for graduates starting at $75,000 a year.
Being named as a Workforce Hub was “a significant shot in the arm for us,” Whirl notes. Although no federal dollars came with the designation, “the White House has connected us with philanthropic partners and other folks who have accelerated our activity,” he says.
A separate federal effort should result in even more investment in the future. In October 2023, the U.S. Commerce Department named the South Carolina-Georgia border as one of 31 national “Tech Hubs” as part of the federal CHIPS and Science Act. The South Carolina Nexus for Advanced Resilient Energy, a regional consortium that includes the Augusta area, was one of five entities chosen to help spur the nation’s move toward clean energy production. Designated Tech Hubs can apply for between $40 million and $70 million in federal grants aimed at economic development.
Augusta Tech’s experience demonstrates the vital role that community colleges are playing in the Biden administration’s workforce development efforts. What’s more, the lessons that Whirl and his colleagues have learned during this experience can serve as a model for other colleges to follow as they ramp up their own workforce initiatives.
A green energy hub
Augusta’s population is just over 200,000, but the Augusta metropolitan area as a whole encompasses more than 600,000 people across seven counties — including two in South Carolina — and is growing rapidly.
The energy sector has been one of the region’s largest employers. One of the U.S. Energy Department’s (DOE) 17 National Labs, Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL), is located just across the river from Augusta in Aiken County, South Carolina. The lab itself employs about 1,000 people, and its research involves hydrogen-based energy production, the safe handling of nuclear waste, and technologies for preventing nuclear proliferation.
SRNL is part of the Energy Department’s Savanna River Site (SRS), an industrial complex responsible for managing nuclear materials and environmental cleanup. SRS processes and stores nuclear materials in support of national defense efforts, and it treats and recycles nuclear and hazardous wastes left from the Cold War. Savanna River Nuclear Solutions LLC, which employs about 15,000 people altogether, operates the complex for DOE.
SK Battery America, one of the largest battery manufacturers in the country, is based in Commerce, Georgia, about 100 miles from Augusta. It’s a global manufacturer of batteries for electric vehicles, with 3,000 employees and revenues of $2 billion. One of the first states to create a certificate program for EV manufacturing, Georgia has become a national leader in EV production, with major manufacturing facilities for Kia and Hyundai — and EV manufacturer Rivian Automotive is building a plant about 40 minutes outside Atlanta, with groundbreaking expected in early 2024.
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“Augusta sits right in the middle of all of that,” Whirl says. “And Augusta Tech is the only public two-year institution in the region, so we provide the talent for all these programs.”
The college has offered an associate degree in nuclear engineering technology for many years, and graduates from the program work as technicians at SRS. Electrical and computer engineering, industrial systems and mechatronics graduates find work in local manufacturing plants.
In August 2023, Whirl was named to the newly formed 21st-Century Energy Workforce Advisory Board. Created as part of the bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the 14-member board will play an important role in shaping DOE’s strategy for supporting current and future workforce needs in the energy sector. Whirl is the only member of the board from a college or university.
Expanding partnerships
With all of the region’s focus on clean energy solutions, it was a natural call to designate Augusta as a Workforce Hub for creating modern energy jobs, Whirl says.
Biden administration officials helped convene meetings with a broad range of key stakeholder groups in the region. These meetings produced a strategic workforce development plan and greater synergy between the area’s workforce organizations.
For instance, Augusta Tech had been working with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) for several decades to ensure that its electrician training programs met employers’ needs. Now, the college has similar partnerships in place with other unions.
“Prior to White House and Energy Department staff getting involved, we had relationships with some of our unions, like IBEW, but we didn’t have relationships with all of them,” Whirl says. “They were able to bring all the unions to the table and have a global discussion about what those partnerships might look like.”
Those conversations have resulted in new apprenticeship programs in trades such as sheet metal work, plumbing, and carpentry, he says.
Similarly, the college already worked with its local school system to offer dual-enrollment courses and pathways in traditional trades, such as welding and automotive technology. Now, the two entities are expanding their dual-enrollment offerings to include electrical and clean energy pathways.
These new dual-enrollment programs will play a key role in attracting more students into electrical careers. That’s an important goal for building out the charging stations needed to support EV use as more consumers buy electric vehicles.
“Right now, we have all these electric vehicles being made, but not enough places to charge them,” Whirl explains. “The infrastructure’s not there. Trying to grow that infrastructure is a top demand. Across the country, we’re short about a million electricians to meet our needs by 2030.”
Another new initiative to emerge from these meetings was a fully-paid nuclear apprenticeship program with Savanna River Nuclear Solutions, which began January 9. The apprenticeship is a 500-hour program in which students attend classes two days a week and go to work three days per week.
“We’re starting with 20 students, but our goal by year three is to get this up to 120,” Whirl says. “It’s pretty significant, because these students will pay nothing. In fact, they’re getting paid to be in school. After 500 contact hours, they pretty much have a guaranteed job, and they’ll graduate making about $75,000 a year — with no debt.”
Eliminating barriers
One of the topics discussed when forming the regional plan was how to eliminate barriers that keep people from participating in the workforce, such as a lack of childcare or transportation. Having all stakeholders at the table led to some creative solutions. For instance, federal officials were able to leverage their relationships to convince the ride-share service Lyft to donate rides for people in the region who needed a way to get to work or school.
“That has gone extremely well,” Whirl says.
Having a centralized plan that everyone can agree on has opened doors to additional philanthropic investment as well. Whirl wasn’t at liberty to say more as of press time, but he hinted that some major donations would be announced later this year.
“When you’re in lockstep as a community,” he says, “that puts you on a track to qualify for more funding.” He explains: “Most grants are looking for partnerships. You can’t just write a grant application in isolation now. Funders are looking for multiple partners who have a shared vision and strategy. To be able to say, ‘This is the Augusta regional plan, everybody’s signed onto it, we need your help to fund this because everybody is on the same page’ — that’s very powerful.”
On the same page
Although community colleges have these types of conversations with industry partners and nonprofit organizations on a regular basis, it’s rare for entire communities to come together to form a centralized plan.
Getting everyone in the same room “allowed us to develop a true regional plan and strategy,” Whirl says. “It also put accountability on everybody in the room to know they had made some commitments.”
White House officials were instrumental in steering the conversations.
“They kept hammering: What are your strategies? What are your big goals? Who’s going to own it?” Whirl says. “When you keep driving toward specifics like that, then the rubber meets the road — and you’ve got decisions that you need to live by.”
Though not every community has the advantage of working with federal officials, this type of community-wide goal-setting and collaboration can happen anywhere.
“We’ve been able to get a lot accomplished in a short amount of time,” Whirl concludes, “because we were able to get hyper-focused.”
