Finding a path: Students learn about trades through construction career day

Apr. 27—Area students traveled to Towne Square Mall on Wednesday for Construction Career Day, an event hosted by the Home Builders Association of Owensboro with the goal of teaching about trade paths.

Approximately 400 students from Apollo, Daviess County, Owensboro, Owensboro Catholic, Whitesville Trinity, Hancock County, Ohio County and McLean County high schools and Owensboro Innovation Academy were in attendance.

Chris Anderson, HBAO committee member and vice president of operations at Sun Windows, said it was the inaugural career day event held locally.

"We modeled this off an event at the state level held in Shelbyville," he said. "We wanted to bring it into our community and felt it was extremely important."

Anderson said there's a "critical need" for labor in the construction industry.

"Over the years we put a lot of emphasis and focus on STEM learning, and we've taken shop class out of high schools," he said. "It's been great to have a much more successful college graduation rate, but we've created an unintentional void in our economy."

A shortage of housing and skilled laborers in the trade industry are two of the consequences to that "unintentional void," according to Anderson.

"With that shortage, the demand for those skills trades has risen incrementally," he said. "Now we're at this point in our society if someone doesn't go to a four-year university but go into a trade or tech school, there's an opportunity to earn more money than a four-year college graduate, without any debt."

Anderson said the goal of the career day is to show students what opportunities are available to them.

"We're extremely excited to bring this to life and look forward to growing this year after year," he said. "For an inaugural event, we couldn't be more pleased with the turnout."

Daviess County High School sophomore Avery Wimsatt said she wants to go into the agriculture industry after graduation.

"I felt like this was a good way to explore my options," she said. "I want to go into (agriculture) business, so there's lot of opportunities out there for that, I've learned."

Mariah Rock, sophomore at DCHS, said she hasn't settled on her postsecondary plans and wanted to attend the event to get a better idea of what she may want to do.

"It's showed me a lot of the different trades that are available and how they compare to other careers out there," she said.

Senior DCHS student Nolan Haynes plans to attend Western Kentucky University to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering to work in the automotive industry.

"I wanted to come to the career day to see what opportunities are out there and what internships I might be able to get," he said. "There are a lot of businesses out there that I never thought would have areas that I want to go into, and it's helping me to explore."

Grace Kemp, senior at Apollo High School, has been a member of the Future Farmers of America club at the school since she was a freshman, which has helped her discover what she'd like to pursue after high school.

"It's a good opportunity to come here," she said. "FFA is a good outlet and opportunity, and it goes hand in hand with the construction side, because you can't have agriculture without all the resources here."

Owensboro Catholic High School senior Thomas Eyre said he knew of a few employees at Owensboro Municipal Utilities that would be at the event, and that sparked his interest in wanting to check out the career day.

"I'm thinking about going into a trade program after graduation, but I'm not entirely sure," he said. "It's given me new insights on what I could be going into."

Eyre said he will be attending Murray State University following his graduation from OCHS this spring.

Owensboro High School sophomore Emily Cox and junior Codi Newmeyer said they wanted to attend the career day just to see what they would be able to learn from local businesses.

"I think it's helping me to decide if I want to go into a trade or not," Cox said.

Emily Cox, Owensboro High School sophomore, said she wanted to attend the career day to see more of what it was about.

Ceary Crisp, success coach for the skilled trades program at Owensboro Community & Technical College, said the college had construction-centered trade options available for students to learn more about at the event.

"We definitely see the workforce need for skilled-trades learners, and we have some of the most innovative technology in our labs on our OCTC campuses," she said.

Crisp said OCTC talked to a lot of students interested in welding

and plumbing.

"We have a lot of students interested in going straight to work after they get out of school," she said. "There's a lot of opportunities for juniors and seniors to take classes at OCTC so they can get to work out of high school, but they can also come to OCTC after graduation for a two year degree."