Externship Program Helps Schools Connect Students with Local Industries
By Eniola Longe, IBJ Media reporter
Reprinted with permission from IBJ Media
Jessica Fuller just spent three days across several D.A. Dodd operations in northern Indiana, watching journeymen and apprentices build the heating and cooling systems that keep buildings running. As a counselor at Adams High School in South Bend, she guides students toward college every day. Guiding them toward a trade is another matter.
That gap is what led her to apply for the South Bend Regional Chamber’s Educator Externship program, a paid opportunity that places teachers and counselors inside local businesses for a firsthand look at industries they know little about. She chose the trades.
“As a school counselor, it’s one of the things I know the least about,” Fuller said. “We know all about how to help kids go to college but nobody’s telling us how to help our kids get into the trades.”
The externship runs five days for educators, including a Monday orientation and a Friday recap, with three full days spent at the business itself. Educators who complete the program receive a $1,000 stipend, funded through an Indiana Career Coaching Grant.
Fuller said the shop floor surprised her most. She had pictured noise and disorder before she ever walked in the door.
“This is a stereotype that I had. When I think of the trades, I think of loud, dirty, just chaos,” Fuller said. “When I walked into that sheet metal shop, I was like, ‘This is actually really calm.’”
Kate Lee, the Chamber’s executive director of education and workforce, said the program exists because of the disconnect between schools and businesses, even when they want the same outcome for students. Since the program began in 2019, 92 employers, 30 schools and 144 educators have taken part.
“Early, age-appropriate introductions to our local industries, employers and career opportunities help students expand their understanding of what’s next after high school and consider how they can best prepare to meet their goals,” Lee said. “When educators introduce the employers and jobs they’ve learned about, students begin to see working and living in our region post-graduation as a viable option.”
Throughout her experience with D.A. Dodd, almost everyone Fuller interacted with said they got into the trades because a family member was involved. She observed that students without that connection rarely hear about the option at all.
The Chamber program extends well beyond the building trades. Businesses representing manufacturing, construction, finance, health care, hospitality, government, media, technology and social services have all participated, including Aunalytics in South Bend, Lippert Components in Elkhart and Maple City Health Care Center in Goshen.
Tony Polotto, senior director of construction at the University of Notre Dame, has hosted externs on campus since the program launched in 2019, when the university was faced with a dwindling trades talent pipeline. The construction industry nationwide was losing workers faster than it could replace them.
“Around 2018, we were in fear of the construction industry because more people were leaving than were coming into the trades itself,” Polotto said. “I remember our vice president at the time asking me who was going to build the next generation of Notre Dame.”
While tracking a direct return on the program has been hard, Polotto said he consistently runs into workers on job sites who trace their interest in construction back to a teacher.
“The feedback that we’re getting is that it’s working,” he said. “It’s a slow process and it’ll take five to 10 years for this to show fruition. Compared to where we were just a decade ago, it’s been great progress.”
The university now hosts construction career days for about 1,000 students each year and uses the externship program to help educators understand the scale and complexity of commercial construction. This year, educators toured at least two dozen ongoing construction projects on campus, Polotto shared.
For the Rolling Prairie-based mechanical contractor, hosting educators is an opportunity to challenge long held assumptions about construction careers. Safety manager Shaun Coomey said many people only associate the trades with manual labor, overlooking the wide range of careers available throughout the industry.
“If you would have asked me 20 years ago, would I be a safety manager? My answer would have been no, I just want to weld,” Coomey said. “Two years ago, I was the guy putting a pipe in the ground, now I’m doing safety. So there’s so many ways that you can move up.”
Coomey has had welding jobs across the country, working on oil refineries, pharmaceutical plants and hospital buildings.
During the externship, Fuller met project managers, engineers and safety professionals. She toured fabrication facilities and visited an active construction project at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. She also learned how technology is reshaping an industry that increasingly relies on digital modeling, prefabrication and specialized technical skills.
Steve Palmer, a safety manager at D.A. Dodd, said experiences like the externship program are more valuable than brochures or online videos.
“The schools need to start reaching out to companies that are in these trades to talk to them about internships and organizing tours to show them what we do,” Palmer said.
“Getting them involved in what we do is the best way. It has to be boots on the ground and we’ve got to work together or it’s not going to get done.”
Trade careers also can provide strong earnings. Palmer, a plumber/pipefitter turned safety manager, spent five years as an apprentice and earned a paycheck the entire time he trained. Meanwhile, he said his wife works as a juvenile probation officer and they are still paying off her college loans.
“It’s just not out there enough for kids to understand,” Palmer said. “We’re six-figure guys.”
Fuller left D.A. Dodd already planning her next move. She wants a union representative to visit Adams High School the same way a college recruiter does each fall.
“I’ve already been thinking about how to present this to my other counselors because I only have one section of the alphabet,” she said. “Already thinking about how I can bring somebody from the union or somebody from Dodd in the same way that we do a college rep visit.”
For Fuller, the externship changed more than her understanding of one company. It gave her a name to call the next time a student asks about a path she used to have no answer for.
“To be able to say if I have a student who’s interested, I know who I can connect you with. That’s the biggest thing I’m taking away,” she said.
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