From left, Srikanth Padmanabhan, Cummins vice president and engine business president; Lori Jafarjian, Cummins Jamestown Engine Plant human resources manager; Mike Abbate, Cummins EBU Supplier Quality & Quality Systems FE director; Justin Hanft, Chautauqua County Education Coalition director; Todd Tranum, Manufacturers Association of the Southern Tier executive director Chautauqua County Chamber of Commerce president and chief executive officer; Timothy Piazza, Manufacturers Association of the Southern Tier talent pipeline and apprenticeship coordinator; and Matt McQueen, Cummins Supply Chain Operations executive director; have earned the Cummins Global and Engine Business Unit Impact Award. Submitted photo

The work accomplished through the partnership between Cummins Jamestown Engine Plant and the Chautauqua County Education Coalition earned the Cummins Global and Engine Business Unit Impact Award.

The award honors Cummins’ employees work accomplished with its partners that embody Cummins’ mission, vision and values. The work of Cummins and the Education Coalition was recognized because of its success in aligning educational career pathways in manufacturing throughout Chautauqua County, which aligned with one of the five focus areas of the award — Community Impact in Education.

The primary purpose of the coalition is to align resources and build capabilities to meet the evolving workforce requirements of the community. To that end, the Education Coalition is building partnerships to assure that Chautauqua County is “community ready” for opportunities that advance our learning system and lead to job retention and job growth.

“Solving complex, long-term challenges such as workforce development requires that organizations work together consistently and strategically,” said Lori Jafarjian, Cummins human resources manager. “No one organization can address the workforce development needs of the economy alone. The coalition provides a structure so that organizations across various sectors (government, not-for-profit, for-profit, philanthropy, etc.) work together, share a common vision and agree on measurements of success. The staff and volunteers that support the Education Coalition are trained and skilled in collective impact work and facilitate the work of the more than 66 organizations working to address the workforce needs of the county.”

In 2017 one area of focus for the coalition was to bring together key stakeholders with a focus on enhancing educational opportunities that would lead to manufacturing careers. Through the collaborative work of the coalition and its stakeholders they identified manufacturing career pathways as one of three strategic focus areas in the community and for the coalition. Data collected by the Manufacturers Association of the Southern Tier identified significant workforce demand among manufacturers in the region. As part of this work, this group has identified catalytic initiatives across the county that connect the local workforce to the local manufacturing economy and worked on better connecting, building and enhancing these programs. These programs included Dream It Do It, Pathways in Technology Early College High School, Jamestown Public School Academy of Pre-Engineering Manufacturing Industrial Technology, Manufacturing Technology Institute at Jamestown Community College and Industrial Equipment Technology pathway development.

“We are honored to play a part, alongside Cummins employees, for this recognition,” he said Justin Hanft Education Coalition executive director. “On behalf of the (Education Coalition) and our partner stakeholders we are truly creating a platform for community collaboration. It is the collection of the great work by many organizations along with volunteers supporting that work that made this recognition possible. Through dedicated collaboration, we have established, nurtured and sustained some programs and initiatives that will have a significant positive impact on our workforce and economy well into the future. We sincerely appreciate the support provided by Cummins and their employees who have volunteered their time to this work.”

At the time of the award submission, the outcomes of the work included more than 3,500 student interactions with 27 schools during 2017 through the Dream It Do It Manufacturing Career Awareness Program; growth in the Pathways in Technology Early College High School program enrollment to 80 students from the Erie 2-Chautauqua-Cattaraugus BOCES region; 157 students enrolled in Jamestown High School’s Pre Engineering Manufacturing Industrial Technology Academy; support of the expansion of Jamestown Community College’s Manufacturing Technology Institute that enrolled 92 students in state Education Department accredited programs; and facilitation of a curriculum gap analysis on the Industrial Equipment Technology certificate program at JCC with regional employers that led to the development of a consortium of trainees who participated in the Manufacturing Standards Skills Council Certified Production Technician program delivered by JCC. That training included four organizations and 16 participants who received a nationally recognized CPT credential. The total number of Cummins volunteers that supported these programs and initiatives throughout the 2017 year was 116 employees.

“We have learned that job creation, job preparation and job access outcomes across the region must improve,” Hanft said. “We also have learned that quality of those outcomes is shaped by the performance and interactions of a complex web of independent individuals, organizations and institutions. These individual stakeholders acting alone cannot shape system outcomes. By working with complex systems through interaction and collaboration, we can improve results for all. If Chautauqua County’s economy is to be rich in growth and opportunity, we all need to be engaged and excel at collaboration.”

The coalition and several of stakeholder organizations involved have been trained on the stakeholder engagement process developed by the firm CivicLab, an institute for civic collaboration out of southeast Indiana which continues to develop best practices in its field.

As a product of this work, all stakeholders participating in the coalition will continue to develop a clear message to potential students, parents, school counselors and educators regarding career pathways in manufacturing in an effort to boost enrollment in available training programs and increase the supply of a skilled workforce available to manufacturers in the region.