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Exec Hopes Award Inspires Women in Manufacturing
CANFIELD, Ohio – Few women see opportunities for themselves in manufacturing, a perception that a local manufacturing executive hopes will change based on an award she recently received.
Dale Foerster, vice president of Starr Manufacturing in Vienna Township, is among 122 recipients throughout the United States who received the STEP Award, presented by the Manufacturing Institute in partnership with Deloitte, the University of Phoenix and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. STEP is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Production.
Recipients of the award represent all levels and types of manufacturing, from the production floor to management.
The Manufacturing Institute "is trying to highlight the fact that there are opportunities [for women in manufacturing] and that there are some in some of these positions," Foerster said. That alone will help women learn about employment opportunities in the field, she said.
The Mahoning Valley Manufacturers Coalition, which Foerster serves as vice president, nominated her because of the "strong leadership" she has provided the organization, said MVMC executive director Jessica Borza.
"She stepped into the role as the organization's first vice president and was instrumental in its early days in helping to define its vision and direction," Borza said. "She also has volunteered countless hours, recruiting additional manufacturing members and speaking to school administrators, guidance counselors and other community organizations about the importance of working together as a community to connect individuals to manufacturing career pathways."
At MVMC's quarterly meeting Friday at the Mahoning County Career & Technical Center, members discussed ways to advance its objective to encourage young people -- men and women -- to consider manufacturing as a career.
MVMC was formed to address the shortage of qualified candidates to fill manufacturing positions but that shortage is even more pronounced among women, Foerster points out. In a machining class with 20 males, there might be one, maybe two, females. However, jobs for women include floor, technical and office jobs.
"The opportunities are there but the perception of women is there not are any jobs, or very few jobs, for women," she stated. Manufacturing is seen as a field dominated by men and women needn’t apply. As a girl growing up in the 1950s, the opportunities Foerster saw were teaching and nursing "because there were examples in front of me," she recalled.
One obstacle for women is that sometimes they have been rewarded for being "cute" or "perky," not for their intelligence, so they don’t pursue manufacturing related fields such as engineering, science or mathematics, a situation she contends is changing. "Women are just as capable as men in all of those fields if they're not told that they're not," Foerster said.
At Friday's meeting, it was anounced that coalition partners are preparing to move forward on the next phase of its skills gap analysis. Educational Data Systems Inc., Morgan Hills, Calif., has been hired to perform the analysis, said Eric Karmecy, project director for the Oh-Penn Pathways to Competitiveness project. Having met with key stakeholders, EDSI will meet with a subset of those stakeholders to formalize the project plan before launching the analysis in February.
"EDSI is going to be reaching out to the providers, to the employers, and really drilling down the gaps. What are the specific skills sets required for the critical and most critical occupations in which they employ? And where are the delinquencies when it comes to curricula available to help train folks identifying credentials and the steps for attaining credentials?" Karmecy said.
The goal is to get the information from the analysis out to young people and the general public "so that they can see the broad picture and the complete pathway for the most critical occupations in which our manufacturers employ," Karmecy said.
During a breakout session, members met in groups to discuss topics such as getting educators in the manufacturing workplace and industrial career fairs. Taking what was learned at the meeting, Karmecy said volunteers will be recruited to be part of action committees so they continue the conversations in greater depth. "When you get people together to have discussions like this,” he said, “it can be very rewarding and eye-opening. So we’re going to continue to work with folks to plan out our activities.”
MORE: 'Pathways to Competitiveness' to Benefit Oh-Penn
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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