4,400 Students Explore Possible Futures at Tuscaloosa's 10th WOW

More than 4,400 students from 53 schools are spending Wednesday and Thursday at Shelton State Community College’s Martin Campus as Worlds of Work, the career exploration event created by West AlabamaWorks, celebrates its 10-year anniversary.

Students will rotate through 11 career pathways during the event, which runs from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. both days: agriculture, construction, cosmetology, education, energy and utilities, engineering and environment, healthcare, hospitality and tourism, manufacturing and automotive, public safety, and transportation and logistics. According to West AlabamaWorks, 110 registered exhibitors representing 80 companies from across West Alabama are taking part.

The total includes about 4,000 students from 42 registered schools and more than 400 additional students from 11 schools participating through the Modern Manufacturing Center of Excellence program.

“For ten years, Worlds of Work has helped students see that meaningful careers are available right here in West Alabama,” said Donny Jones, executive vice president and chief workforce officer of the Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama and executive director of West AlabamaWorks. “This anniversary gives us an opportunity to celebrate the students, educators, employers, and community partners who have helped build WOW while continuing the work of preparing our future workforce one student at a time.”

First held in 2015, Jones said WOW has now seen roughly 40,000 to 45,000 students have come through the event on Shelton State’s campus over the last decade. The event is so successful, dozens of other organizations have copied the blueprint and launched other WOWs across Alabama and in Florida, Missouri, Virginia, Washington State and many other regions far beyond the event's place of origin here in Tuscaloosa.

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Picking Pathways Early

Asked whether a decade of WOW has started to make a dent in the region’s long-running workforce shortage, Jones said the problem remains enormous, but the numbers are moving.

“The problem is so great, but we have more kids now in Career Technical programs in our region alone than we ever have,” Jones said. “We’ve seen a 5 to 10% increase year over year since we started. And it sounds like just a number, but it’s everything we do around this event.”

Jones said the two days at Shelton State are only the beginning of a months-long effort in each participating school.

“We take a whole team into the schools of every one of these kids you see on this campus. Our team goes into their high schools between now and March with virtual reality headsets,” he said. “So if a young person here really enjoyed manufacturing or construction, when we go into their school, we’ll put them on a construction site or in a hospital in virtual reality, right there in the classroom.”

“Our team coaches them, but we also train the career coaches and counselors to go through workforce material with students and start have those conversations about what they want to do and be, and we’re doing media work that encourages parents to have those conversations at home too.”

9th grade is still young, but Jones said targeting high school freshmen is deliberate.

“The reason that’s so important is because in March of their ninth grade year, students choose their classes for 10th, 11th, and 12th grade. It’s critical for us to reach them in ninth grade so they’re choosing courses that get them on a pathway,” he said. “What we’re trying to do is make career technical programs true pathways, not electives, but pathways that lead directly to a job.”

“And what you’re seeing is these industries are investing in the students. They follow them all the way through the tracks and hire them at the end. So much is happening in placements and training long before it ever shows up in the workforce numbers.”

Filling Jobs and Forging Partnerships

Asked to estimate how many jobs WOW has helped fill, Jones didn’t hesitate.

“Thousands. Thousands of jobs,” he said. “When you look at our region, we have over 100 manufacturers alone here, and all of them are operating at capacity. BF Goodrich being the exception, but that’s an 80-year-old plant, and the workforce situation there really had nothing to do with us.”

Michelin North America announced in June that it will close the BFGoodrich tire plant in Tuscaloosa by the end of 2028, eliminating about 1,200 jobs.

Jones said employers’ commitment to WOW is visible in who they send to staff it.

“You have over a hundred companies investing millions of dollars in this event, over a million dollars just in payroll to put people here today. Because most of these are skilled trades workers,” he said. “When you walk into the healthcare section, almost everybody in there has an RN credential. Look at how many law enforcement officers are over there.”

“It does more than fill jobs too, because it causes the business community to work together, to come together. That makes it easier for us to rally around issues, fill apprenticeships, and so much more.”

A Personal Proof Point

As it celebrates a decade of impacting youth, Jones called WOW a legacy event for his career and said the model’s reach has grown well beyond Tuscaloosa.

“It’s very fulfilling,” he said. “And so is seeing the things that have spread from it, Modern Manufacturing, WOW events in all these other states - almost every single week, we're training a new community, a chamber, an economic development board, a workforce board on how to execute one of our programs back in their hometowns.”

The event’s payoff is personal, too. Jones said a video showing former WOW students who chose a pathway and are now working successfully will be shown Thursday, and one of them is his son.

“He came to Worlds of Work, did an activity with Mercedes-Benz U.S. International, and they stayed in touch with him and mentored him all the way through high school,” Jones said. “He went into their mechatronics program through Shelton State. That’s Mercedes’s career training program for automotive maintenance, more of an engineering, robotics, and programming track. Now he’s 26 years old, with a job making great money and he’s getting married this Saturday.”

From the Black Belt to the Beach

Jones said one of the most meaningful parts of WOW is who it reaches.

"It’s so cool to be a part of something that’s bigger than any one individual, any one company, any one school. You can see it on these kids’ faces,” he said. “A lot of these students come from the Black Belt and rural Alabama, and they would never have this experience without West AlabamaWorks and all our partners. That alone is enough to say we’ve made a difference.”

“When you’re coming from a rural school, we have some high schools that will only graduate 35 kids in an entire class, they don’t get to go places and do a lot of things. We help fund a lot of the trips up here. Some of these Modern Manufacturing students drove four hours to be here this morning.”

Students this week are coming from Tuscaloosa City and Tuscaloosa County schools as well as systems in Bibb County, Fayette County, Greene County, Hale County, Lamar County, Marengo County, Pickens County, Sumter County and beyond. The school traveling the farthest is driving about four hours from Gulf Shores, and Jones said schools like it aren’t recruited.

“We don’t convince them. Our school systems have been invested partners for a long time. But the other schools actually apply to come and be a part of it. Because there’s nothing like it,” he said. “We call this the Disney World of workforce. We want those kids, when they get off the bus and start walking through this, to have that same feeling you get when you walk into Disney World and go through those magic gates.”

This year’s event is being held under the anniversary theme “A Decade of Inspiring Futures," and will continue on Shelton State's Martin Campus off Highway 69 South on Thursday.

For more coverage of education and workforce news in West Alabama, stay connected to the Tuscaloosa Thread.