Introduction to trades program in fifth year: teaching basic skills to become an electrician, welder, or construction worker.

• Author: Strieker, Julie
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Building Alaska

When Chad Hutchinson graduated from high school in 1988, he had life all figured out. He would be a heavy equipment operator in a union apprenticeship program, work up to a journeyman position, and have a rewarding, well-paying career.

It didn't work out quite the way he had planned.

"I was super-smart. Knew everything. Didn't need any help from anybody," Hutchinson told a group of Fairbanks high school students and parents on a frigid Monday evening in early January. "Well, when I graduated high school, I found out they look at attendance records. And I found out they look at grades and you get scored off that."

Hutchinson didn't make the cut. In fact, it took four tries before he was finally accepted into a union apprenticeship. He wants to make sure today's students don't fall into the same trap, he says.

Phenomenal Opportunities

"The opportunities you guys have in front of you right now are phenomenal," Hutchinson says. "We didn't have these opportunities when we went to school."

One such opportunity is a partnership between the Fairbanks school district, local unions, and the Fairbanks Pipeline Training Center, of which Hutchinson is executive director.

The Introduction to Trades class teaches students the basic skills and techniques to become an electrician, welder, or construction worker, says Daniel Domke, Career and Technical Education director for the Fairbanks North Star School District. It's a competitive program; only forty students are accepted, but it's an opportunity to get a head start on a career in the trades.

Jumping-Off Point

The program is in its fifth year and is a jumping-off point for the more rigorous School to Apprenticeship program, a gateway to union membership and a lifelong, well-paying career, Domke says. Last year, eleven students were chosen by the unions to go directly from the Introduction to Trades classes to the School to Apprenticeship program.

That several of the students in the room in early January had already turned in School to Apprenticeship applications, as well as signing up for the introductory class, "speaks very highly of your initiative and shows the direction that you're serious about going," Domke says.

"It takes commitment. It takes dedication," Domke told students, noting that many of them would be giving up sports and other extracurricular interests their last semester in high school. "The outcome is this: You're going to get a real-world look at some real-world occupations."

In the...