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As the Kern Community College District (Kern) continues to develop successful career pathways for non-traditional students, one consistent theme that emerges is the need to develop a range of work-based learning opportunities into the learning experience. By earning and learning through on-the-job training programs, students are able to support themselves and their families while developing important job skills, life skills, and simultaneously creating relationships with future employers.

The gold standard for work-based learning opportunities are our existing apprenticeship programs with the building trades, which equip laborers with complex skills that can immediately provide family-sustaining wages upon completion of the program.  These programs require standing committees of industry professionals that collaborate with colleges to oversee demanding program requirements. Governor Newsom has outlined an ambitious plan to serve 500,000 apprentices throughout the state by 2029, and the state invested more than $231 million into a Five-Point Action Plan. This plan is also supported by the California Apprenticeship Initiative launched by the state Chancellor’s office.

Five-Point Action Plan:

Supporting regional and sectoral apprenticeship intermediaries
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Creating new apprenticeships outside of the traditional trades
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Improving gender representation in the trades
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Supporting youth apprenticeship for in-school and out-of-school youth
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Building pathways into the public sector

Meeting the Governor’s challenge will require working with industry partners to identify and train for 500,000 job placements by 2029. This challenge can be partially met by expanding apprenticeship in the traditional trades. But by the numbers, it will also require rapidly extending the apprenticeship model of demand driven, on-the-job, employer supervised training that leads to job placement and advancement opportunities across a broad spectrum of industries and skills.

Community college districts like Kern are expanding our existing infrastructure of apprenticeships with the building trades, diversifying apprenticeship programs in non-traditional areas such as healthcare, supporting pre-apprenticeship programs, and leveraging our network of CTE subject matter experts through regional consortia.

The forum discussed traditional and non-traditional apprenticeships, the role of pre-apprenticeships in recruiting workers from historically disinvested communities, and other workforce development opportunities. Current statewide initiatives like the California Student Aid Commission’s Learning-Aligned Employment Program are a part of the effort to ensure that the program of study of every student includes at least some work-based learning experience.

Beyond the building trades, there are many other forms of skilled labor that offer work-based learning opportunities, such as in the medical industry, computer science and the public sector. While many medical education degrees require students to work dozens of hours in a clinical setting, medical professionals don’t tend to think of their on-the-job training as an apprenticeship, per se, but as “clinical rotations” in the hospitals. There are also a wide variety of careers in the medical field beyond serving as a nurse or doctor (such as radiology technicians, medical assistants, and public health professionals), and those career pathways provide work-based learning opportunities, as well. Skilled professionals in cybersecurity, computer programming, and website design are in high demand, and apprenticeship programs such as those offered by Bitwise Industries in the Central Valley are teaching crucial skills that are essential for the future of the global economy.

Before students are qualified to serve in some of the work-based learning opportunities I’ve described above, however, they may need to learn crucial soft skills like language arts, time management, and work ethic. Pre-apprenticeship programs are an important equity tool for students from historically-disadvantaged backgrounds to be prepared for careers that can provide upward mobility for themselves and their families. Pre-apprenticeships recruit farmworkers, justice-involved individuals, foster youth and other underrepresented groups to teach them core literacy, mathematics and problem solving skills. Pre-apprentices also get access to job shadowing opportunities in a wide variety of trades.

Pre-apprenticeship programs are an important equity tool for students from historically-disadvantaged backgrounds to be prepared for careers that can provide upward mobility for themselves and their families.

At Bakersfield College, one of the community colleges in Kern, the commitment to providing opportunities for students to learn and earn on campus resulted in the college expanding its funding from approximately $800K to over $2M in the span of five years.  Since then, we have continued to build and integrate internships and apprenticeships into the learn and earn program.  Now with the investments from the state, work-based learning can be more aligned with demand-driven opportunities by employers so that students are, more-or-less, assured job placement at the end of their program.  I imagine that in five years, work-based learning will become a regular feature of the community college curriculum.

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Works Cited

1. Learning-Aligned Employment Program – California Student Aid Commission. (n.d.). California Student Aid Commission. Retrieved December 31, 2022, from https://www.csac.ca.gov/learning-aligned-employment-program
2. (California Apprenticeship Initiative (CAI) New and Innovative Grant Program, n.d.) California Community Colleges. Retrieved December 31, 2022, from https://www.cccco.edu/About-Us/Chancellors-Office/Divisions/Workforce-and-Economic-Development/apprenticeship/ca-apprenticeship-initiative
3. Laverde, P. (2022, July). Action Plan in Place for Reaching California’s Apprenticeship Goals. California Department of Industrial Relations. Retrieved December 31, 2022, from https://www.dir.ca.gov/DAS/e-News/2022/Action-Plan-in-Place-for-Reaching-California-Apprenticeship-Goals.html 
4. California Invests Over $231 Million to Advance and Expand Apprenticeship | California Department of Industrial Relations. (2022, July 15). California Department of Industrial Relations. Retrieved December 31, 2022, from https://www.dir.ca.gov/DIRNews/2022/2022-59.html 
5. Division of Apprenticeship Standards – Funding Sources. (2019, December). California Department of Industrial Relations. Retrieved December 31, 2022, from https://www.dir.ca.gov/das/funding_source.htm
6. Apprenticeship Standards Apprenticeship Innovation Funding. (2022, October). California Department of Industrial Relations. Retrieved December 31, 2022, from https://www.dir.ca.gov/DAS/Grants/Apprenticeship-Innovation-Funding.html 

By Sonya Christian, Kern Community College District Chancellor, and Martin Keller, Director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Kern County is one of the top oil-producing counties in the nation, but it is also a community that has embraced its renewable resources and now produces 60% of the renewable energy in California, the world’s fifth largest economy.

The discussion related to climate resilience and the energy transition is often framed as old versus new, where oil rigs, refineries and gas-powered electricity plants will soon be replaced by wind farms and solar arrays. But we don’t see it this way. We see the energy sector as unified by a single mission: advancing energy technology and integrating both in a way that provides a smooth and sustainable transition to a decarbonized economy by producing as much reliable, clean, affordable power as possible.

Our organizations, the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Kern Community College District, are working together in partnership to ensure energy remains a primary economic driver in Kern County and continues to create good jobs for all residents going forward as it has until now. To us, the way to do that is clear: by harnessing the significant investments coming from the state and federal governments and working with local industry and government to maximize renewable energy generation while making legacy fuels as clean as possible. And doing so in a way that prioritizes the creation of good jobs that can support families and equitable benefits for all residents of this community.

In California, community colleges were created decades ago to be workforce development engines, equipping students with in-demand skills so they can quickly move into the labor market and secure a good job. At Kern CCD, workforce development is not just a core mission but a top priority, and we believe in a new framework for making it happen. It used to be that industry brought new technologies to market and then community colleges would get together with companies to discuss the new job skills and education needed to prepare workers for these jobs. The new framework we work under calls upon community colleges to partner with the researchers as new technology is being developed in order to visualize what kind of agile workforce needs to be created.

We approach this work, as we do everything, with an eye toward equity so that as we embrace the technology that will create the jobs of the future we also make sure the wealth created in the process stays close to home and benefits the people and communities where the work happens. We make this happen through our close community ties, reaching underemployed and underrepresented workers; working with employers to create good jobs and pathways to them; and including communities in discussions about new technologies to prevent adverse health and quality-of-life outcomes in the neighborhoods where industrial facilities are located.

The partnership between NREL and Kern CCD is perfect for this work given NREL’s decades of focused leadership in renewable energy and energy efficiency research, development, and deployment. NREL’s long-standing expertise and breadth of knowledge has positioned it as a leader in the clean energy transition. NREL research is focused on solving market-relevant problems that result in deployable solutions, and their partnerships ensure this work is relevant and applicable to the energy problems that people are trying to solve in their own state, city, or community. By partnering with Kern CCD in Kern County, a place where the energy transition is already happening, NREL can utilize its expertise in a way that ensures solutions are inclusively designed and benefits accrue equitably to communities, creating a national model for how to do this.

Already there are examples in Kern of how energy companies are evolving to meet the urgent demands of climate resiliency. A refinery in Bakersfield that’s been in continuous operation since 1934 will begin producing renewable diesel alongside gasoline. California Resources Corporation (CRC), once a traditional oil and gas producer, has also embraced the energy transition and invested capital to pioneer technology to capture and store carbon emissions at its power generation plant at Elk Hills. Carbon capture and storage has been recognized as critical and necessary by many studies exploring how to reach net zero emissions in the next three decades. Energy companies focused on fossil fuel resources have the know-how and geological engineering expertise to prove and deploy these technologies. And Kern County has the geological formations to store carbon, as well as other energy infrastructure, that make it an ideal place to focus attention, effort, and investment to propel this technology forward for wider use.

Oil and gas production has sustained the local economy in Kern for nearly a century, providing well-paying jobs, even for those just out of high school. The industry is a significant contributor to the local tax base, funding government services like public safety and libraries, money that some fear could vanish with the phaseout of fossil fuels. Our challenge is to ensure that doesn’t happen, and we believe that together we can decarbonize the energy sector in Kern while developing and deploying renewable energy technologies for the future that create good jobs and a flourishing regional economy. 

The task ahead of us is a huge one. Our two organizations are committed to working together to bring cutting-edge technology and the nation’s premier scientific expertise to the educational institutions in Kern that are preparing the future workforce. But we alone cannot make the future a success on our own. We know it is imperative that our work also involves and overlaps with the work being done by partners in government, education, community organizations, and labor to make it happen.

But let’s be clear: There is no old and new. There is only us, and together we will create the energy future.