“I can’t get good people to run the machines.”
“I can’t get good men to go to my college.”
The two statements are common laments today and related. Stephen Dubner’s brilliant podcast, Freakonomics, just updated its series from two years ago about dropping college enrollment and why men are not going to college, much less finishing. He interviewed, among many others, D’Wayne Edwards, founder and President of Pensole Lewis College in Detroit.
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D’Wayne Edwards’ story is fascinating and relevant to the manufacturing world. He grew up in Inglewood, California, home of the Forum where the Los Angeles Lakers played. It is a tough black neighborhood where boys rarely even graduate high school and often end up dead or in jail by the time they are 21.
D’Wayne had an unusual talent for drawing and especially designing sneakers. He says he grew up with a No. 2 pencil in his hand. His guidance counselor in high school told him he had no chance to make it in college as an artist. Edwards chose a different path.
Edwards got his start working at LA Gear and Skechers. Then he spent ten years at Nike with the Jordan brand. He did work for Michael Jordan and Carmelo Anthony, obtaining more than 50 design patents.
After more than a decade at Nike, he decided to take a sabbatical. He started a two-week design course at the University of Oregon, and called it Pensole Academy. Pensole is a combination of “pencil” and the sole of your foot.
The program at Oregon became so popular that he decided to leave his job at Nike. He wanted to expand the idea, and a friend told him about Lewis College in Detroit, a historically black college started in 1928, aimed at teaching women office skills like typing and arithmetic, so they would be prepared for work in the fast growing automotive industry.
The school had gone into bankruptcy in recent years, but Edwards saw an opportunity because in his view American higher education had lost sight of its original purpose–to prepare young people to work where they were needed. His goal was to provide a free school, funded by companies that needed first rate, well-trained people who could step into work immediately.
Edwards moved to Detroit and began to build the school, naming it Pensole Lewis College (PLC), and with the help of some Michigan politicians, got funding and the designation as a historical Black College like Morehouse and Prairie View.
His early program was backed by Nike, Adidas, New Balance, and Herman Miller, among others. Current courses are five weeks and stress developing professionalism, especially being on time. Originally, if students were late they had to do 50 push-ups for each minute of lateness. This eventually was changed to explaining the late minutes to the interviewing employer who financed the program. Tough, but it gets results.
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Is D’Wayne Edwards’ Pensole Lewis College possibly a partial model for the machining industry?
Perhaps Mazak or a big machining supplier could see a possibility in funding a training setting, particularly as more and more men are finding universities unappealing. Welding and heating and air conditioning are able to attract talent. Hospitals attract workers.
I know what we are doing today is not working well and skilled men are getting older or dropping out of the workforce.
What are your thoughts? Do you think Pensole Lewis can be adapted into a model for machining workers?
Question: What ideas to you have to help young men who are looking for opportunities?
4 Comments
We are partnering with a very successful program ECAMP (Early College Advanced Manufacturing Pathway) at Goodwin University in East Hartford, CT in a pre-apprenticeship capacity. It is in it’s second year and appears to be growing in the number of students signing up and the number of participating manufacturers.
Our manufacturing manager is very happy with the quality of these young men (seniors in high school at the start of the program) and their work ethic and engagement.
We have also done quite a bit of work on work place development to offer a good work environment, which i think is equally important.
The continuous improvement approach needs to be applied to workforce and workplace development for it to be successful.
Lots of opportunities exist such as participating in MFG Day, reaching out to your local tech schools, taking advantage of state programs, etc.
Good to hear from you again Betty. I think this is exactly what the industry needs to grow its own talent. The people are out there if they are developed.
Above ‘men’ are mentioned 7 times, people 4 times, and women once. And the reference to women was about a gender stereo typed role. We need women in the industry too. I think it is essential for the world for balanced teams to evolve in all jobs, roles, industries, and at home. As the world becomes more complicated we will need all perspectives and ideas to meet the challenges both now and ahead.
John, we certainly need women in the field but in today’s world unfortunately few women seem interested in machining. Betty DaCruz is an exception but the big opportunity is to expand the field with men who now comprise approximately 40% of college students.