Mike Gawinski, a former manufacturing executive who works as a part-time instructor at UNCW, once asked a group of graduating students whether any of them wanted a career in manufacturing.
Four out of 140 students raised their hands.
Gawinski started teaching at the University of North Carolina Wilmington last year after retiring as CEO of Rulmeca, a company that makes motorized conveyor belts and pulleys in Wilmington. He told the story to Jim Flock, president of the Cape Fear Manufacturing Partnership (CFMP), who, in turn, shared it at a CFMP meeting in February.
“Four out of 140,” Flock repeated for emphasis during the gathering. “We’ve got to change that.”
The meeting, held at a firm that manufactures employee recognition awards off Castle Hayne Road, included students and officials from UNCW, Cape Fear Community College, Brunswick Community College and N.C. State University, along with manufacturing professionals from around the region.
Flock and other officials started the CFMP five years ago as an offshoot of the Cape Fear Workforce Development Board. The partnership holds quarterly meetings and has grown to include more than 70 members.
Part of the group’s mission statement says the CFMP “was formed to address the challenges we face in improving and growing the manufacturing base in Southeastern North Carolina. We aim to attract job seekers and to help train, develop and align talent to the wide diversity of career paths available in our industries.”
According to the mission statement, the partnership “will achieve this by raising public awareness and elevating the status of manufacturing jobs in the community through education and informing the general public, policy makers, educators and media partners of the benefits of a career in manufacturing. We will work with our partners to allocate resources, influence policy and form strategies to achieve our goal while helping to revive the industrial capabilities of our nation and enhancing the economic well-being of our citizens.”
To advance that mission, the CFMP has been working on a project to develop a measurable set of three- to five-year goals, said Didier Rabino, an executive coach who specializes in operational excellence. Rabino told those participating in the partnership meeting Feb. 12 that the project has also involved identifying key initiatives, programs and other partnerships.
Rabino said that after a survey of partnership members, officials decided to form three peer groups, each focused on a different issue: talent acquisition and development; operational excellence; and sales and marketing.
“The groups will be composed of six to eight manufacturers plus one support member in order to bring some external support,” Rabino said. “And the governance will be that each group will report quarterly to our CFMP meeting and say, ‘Hey, this is what we’ve done. This is what we’ve learned. This is what we’re going to do next.’”
As it advances its goals, the group also has merch, having launched a web store Feb. 11 that was created by Zack Sblendorio, chief operating officer of Wilmington-based SeaSide Silk Screening and treasurer of the CFMP Board of Directors. The CFMP web store sells everything from T-shirts to beer mugs.
“This little step is going to allow us to help start raising some funds that we can do some great things in the community with,” Sblendorio said during the CFMP gathering in February at the employee awards firm, MyEmployees.
CFMP’s quarterly meeting agenda in February also included a presentation by Chris Lewandowski, director of the UNCW Career Center, about the launch of the center’s internship fund. As of press time, the launch was scheduled for March 1.
“This will be open to students returning to campus in the fall, rising sophomores, juniors and seniors. But if you have secured an internship this upcoming summer that is either unpaid or under $15 an hour, we can help supplement some of your pay for this upcoming summer with our internship fund,” Lewandowski said. The fund can provide supplements between $1,500 and $6,000 for the summer, he said.
“We know that sometimes we’re working on particularly lean budgets. We do encourage all of our employers to pay their interns. But if you’re thinking, ‘I need to set up an internship; I’ve never done this before,’ we also have team members on our employer development staff,” he said.
Lewandowski said the fund would prioritize New Hanover and surrounding counties.
“From the business perspective, there’s almost nothing that you need to do other than hire and employ our students. So, we will have an agreement that we will ask you to fill out, where you’ll identify who the supervisor will be,” he said.
Employers will need to sign up for Handshake, an online career platform used at hundreds of colleges, according to UNCW’s Handshake website.
The CFMP is also considering adding a tool to its website that allows students to submit resumes. The group has already proved to be a resource for potential hires. Anna Mangum, the N.C. State Industry Expansion Solutions regional manager for the south central region at N.C. State University, recently shared an industrial engineering student’s resume with the partnership’s email list. Mangum traveled to the CFMP’s February meeting with that student, Savannah Lambert.
“Within one hour (of sharing her resume), Savannah had opportunities to interview with two of your members,” Mangum told the group. “I want to give her as many opportunities as possible and make sure she finds the right fit. But N.C. State is also very interested in engaging our student talent, particularly in the manufacturing sector, from our engineering supply chain. We have 9,000 undergrads in the College of Engineering, and we want to be able to bring those to your front door.”
CFMP’s Flock has been working with students as a teacher at Brunswick Community College.
“I like to tell my students that I’m helping to create the next generation of manufacturing professionals. They’re the ones who, 10 years from now, are going to be standing up here, not me, not you,” Flock said. “They’re the ones who can be up here promoting our activities, talking about what we do, and they’re going to be creating the next generation of manufacturing professionals.”
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