The Manufacturing Career Dream Team wound down the school year with several events. Dream Team members Brittany Wing from Vector Windows, Ryan Swiontek from ITW Heartland, and Jimmy Jevnager from FORCE America, spoke to around 70 students at breakout sessions at the Alexandria Area High School Career Fair who were interested in learning more about the manufacturing industry and careers in this field.  Their message to students was: A Successful Career in Manufacturing Begins After High School – Many Paths Can Be Chosen on That Journey. The Dream Team members spoke to four groups of students about the many different educational paths that can lead to a happy manufacturing career life. This also included information on how much school is needed for the varying careers in manufacturing. Dream Team members Melany Wolf from Massman Automation Designs, Sam Ewald from Massman Automation Designs, and Jason Crannell from ITW Heartland, manned the booth at this event. Students who visited the Dream Team booth were able to compete in a building activity that was an introduction to what manufacturing really is. They were also able to ask any questions that they had about manufacturing and even see a 3D printer at work creating TSMA key chain fobs for them to take as a souvenir. 

After the TSMA Career Dream Team Presentations at Kalon Prep Academy, they had 40 students who were interested in learning more about manufacturing careers. Because of this, we put together a day of tours for the school and called it Kalon Prep Academy's Tour of Manufacturers Day. Students toured four TSMA manufacturing businesses that day which included Desmon Engineering, Aagard, ITW Heartland, and FORCE America. This day was a complement to touring ATCC and Alexandria Industries on different days. It is so exciting to see so many students interested in the manufacturing industry.

Several social media Dream Team videos will be submitted and played on Tik Tok, Instagram and Facebook. Because of illness, we were missing some Dream Team members in our videos.  But now we have those members taped and added to complete our videos. Please continue to share and like these posts so we can get the word out there to young students on what a wonderful opportunity it is to work in the manufacturing industry!

The success of the Dream Team is because of the wonderful TSMA businesses in the area. Thank you for all your support that you give the Dream Team for this future workforce program! Thank you also for the wonderful ideas that you have given us! Keep them coming!
 
Contact Shari Petersen if can help us out on any of the programming above by emailing dreamteam@midwestmanufacturers.com or by calling (320) 766-0081.