Tuscaloosa’s Worlds of Work Turns 10, Impacting Over 40,000 Students & Setting Blueprint to Follow
Tuscaloosa's Worlds of Work turned 10 this week, and the people who built it spent Thursday morning at Shelton State Community College taking stock of what the career expo for high school freshmen has become.
More than 4,000 students walked the Shelton State campus across the program’s two-day run this week, meeting the welders, nurses, technicians, police, firefighters and more who do the featured jobs for a living.
Over 40,000 young students from across the region have come through since 2015, and the model West AlabamaWorks built here now reaches more than 25,000 students a year in other communities around the country.
Alabama Secretary of Workforce Greg Reed delivered the keynote at a VIP breakfast marking the anniversary Thursday morning, telling a room of educators and employers that the shortage WOW was built to address has only grown more urgent.
A Decade of Discovery
Russell DuBose, board chair of West AlabamaWorks and vice president of human resources at Phifer Incorporated, said the program began with a straightforward idea.
“When WOW began in 2015, we had a vision of bringing education and industry together in a way that would help students see real career opportunities,” DuBose said. “Look where we are today.”
He said the headcount is not what makes it work.
“What makes WOW special isn’t just the number of students we’ve reached, it’s what happens when those students walk through the doors,” DuBose said. “They see careers they’ve never considered. They operate equipment, explore technologies, and talk directly with the men and women who work in these industries. And sometimes, in just a few minutes, a student discovers something that can change the direction of their life.”
This year’s event drew Modern Manufacturing students from across Alabama, some traveling from as far as Mobile, along with visitors from Aiken, South Carolina; Augusta, Georgia; Gainesville, Florida; Iowa City, Iowa; Jackson, Georgia; and Ocala, Florida, who came to see how the program runs and consider implementing something similar back home.
“Sometimes, just stand still, close your eyes, and listen,” DuBose told the room. “You’ll hear the chatter of students, employers, and volunteers communicating, educating, and teaching.”
From the Bus to the Plant
Video testimonials played during the breakfast featured former WOW students now working in the fields they first encountered at the expo.
A nurse who attended as a student said the hands-on stations are what stuck with her, and that watching nurses care for her mother during breast cancer treatment had already pointed her toward the work.
“I got to see how the nurses cared for her. So I thought I might want to be a nurse, to be able to be with people in those moments,” she said. “I was actually able, years later, to come back as a teacher and educator in the program. So it came full circle.”
One video was special to Donny Jones, the CEO of West AlabamaWorks, because it featured his own son, Carson.
When the younger Jones first stepped off the bus at WOW his freshman year, he had no idea what he wanted to do when he graduated. He said the automakers there caught his eye, which set him down the path to become the maintenance technician he is now at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance.
“When I first saw Mercedes at WOW, I never thought I would actually work there, and now here I am,” he said.
“One of the things I try to tell parents all the time, our story can be any student’s story in West Alabama,” Jones said. “Every student who chooses their pathway at WOW and engages in career technical courses and industry has a pathway available to them.”
Health Care’s Worsening Shortages
Reed, who spent 14 years in the Alabama Senate including a term as majority leader, has run the consolidated Alabama Department of Workforce since Gov. Kay Ivey appointed him in January 2025. The agency merged four state agencies under one mission.
Asked what business leaders statewide tell him, Reed said the answer never varies.
“A trained workforce,” he said. “It is not only Alabama’s biggest economic challenge, it may be America’s biggest economic challenge.”
Health care is the worst of it. Reed said $203 million in federal money is headed to Alabama for rural health care investment, with 30 percent of it required to go toward workforce programming.
“It’s not just nurses, LPNs and RNs, it’s respiratory therapists, occupational techs, pharmacy techs, all kinds of folks involved in the health care business,” Reed said.
He also previewed a Workforce Pell grant, a new federal program that pays for eight to 14-week training programs and will send tens of millions of dollars to Alabama.
Apprenticeships and Ads at 3 a.m.
Reed said the Legislature has put $250 million in new money into career technical education in the last two years and that roughly 5,000 Alabamians are in apprenticeship programs at any given time, training in 51 occupations through partnerships with 537 companies and organizations.
He pointed to one in Tuscaloosa, where Nucor Steel runs its apprenticeship program in collaboration with Shelton State. Reed said the man who runs it told him the retention rate is 97 percent.
A newer effort puts 16 and 17-year-olds who already know what they want to do into paid apprenticeships during summers and afternoons. Reed said some business leaders balked at the child labor implications.
“Well, it just so happens that I am the agency responsible for the enforcement of child labor laws in Alabama,” Reed said. “I got all the lawyers in the room, got all the inspectors in the room, and said, figure it out. And they did.”
Reed said the state’s labor force participation among 25 to 55-year-olds is around 80 percent, comparable to other Southern states, but there's a wide gap among 18 to 26-year-olds. His agency’s answer has been an awareness campaign aimed at where those people actually are.
“Do you realize there are people by the millions watching other people play video games online at 3:00 a.m.?” Reed said. “So we’ve got advertising running at 3:00 a.m. targeting that 24-year-old living in grandma’s basement who needs a job. We’re letting them know, go to workforce.alabama.gov. Get out of the basement. Do something that matters.”
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