Jason: Hello and welcome you're listening to the Alaska department of labor and workforce development podcast series where you hear all about how the department helps Alaskan jobseekers businesses and communities. My name is Jason Caputo and with me today is my guest Cathy LeCompte we're going to be talking about the Alaska Maritime Education Consortium Cathy thanks so much for joining us can you please briefly introduce yourself and talk about your role.

Cathy: Sure I am the division director of the Alaska Vocational Technical Center. We lovingly call it AVTEC. We are a division of the department which makes us owned and operated by the state of Alaska. So I like to say AVTEC is Alaska's training center and we've been training Alaskans for work in Alaska for fifty years.

Jason: Wow fifty years I did not know that, I have heard of AVTEC of course many Alaskans have, and I’m aware of many of the training programs that you guys put on the help so many Alaskans. Today we want to talk about something you guys are involved with specifically the Alaska Maritime Education Consortium or A. M. E. C. can you briefly explain what that is.

Cathy: Sure first I want to say that the Alaska Maritime Training Center is situated at AVTEC. We have a huge maritime training center that is operated out of out of AVTEC and the Alaska Maritime Education Consortium is a collaborative partnership between our maritime training center at AVTEC and the University of Alaska’s maritime training center.

Cathy: They have several located around the state and together we've created this consortium to expand access to maritime education and training across the state.

Jason: Gotcha okay well that makes perfect sense so it's a collaboration between AVTEC and the University of Alaska’s maritime training programs that makes a lot of sense and off the top of my head I can think of a lot of advantages. Let's break it down what are the advantages for Alaska job seekers from this collaboration.

Cathy: For jobseekers it's going to provide them at better access to the training because as we join forces we can increase our training capacity of both AVTEC maritime training center and the university because the university has a lot of community campuses across the state that have facilities that we can share and after because a lot of training programs. We have over forty US Coast Guard approved courses that can be delivered in Coast Guard approved training centers across the state so by joining forces we're bringing the training to Alaskans. So they don't have to leave their home and come to Seward to go to Ketchikan or Kodiak or wherever and get their training they can get it right there at home.

Jason: That's fantastic and it is especially for a state like Alaska where we have such huge geography issues were all spread out and we have transportation issues bringing the training to people is so valuable.

Jason: So if we take a step back and we look at the broader picture what's the benefit of this collaboration this consortium for the state of Alaska as a whole.

Cathy: The benefit to the state of Alaska as a whole is that by joining forces we can share resources and it's cost effective that way. It's not cheap to do career technical education or vocational training it's an expensive undertaking but a very necessary one because students have to have the ability. Alaskans have to have the ability to get their hands on stuff and learn how to do stuff and it wouldn't be very cost effective if we built up lots of resources in one or two areas it's going to work much better if we could collaborate take resources that we have and share them or share facilities. So for example right now AVTEC has forty Coast Guard courses. Our instructors are all Coast Guard approved our center is Coast Guard approved.

Cathy: Ketchikan has fewer instructors and fewer courses but they have an approved center and they're  all approved as well so what we've done is we've cross pollinated so all of our instructors at AVTEC and all of Ketchikan’s instructors at the Southeast Alaska Maritime Training Center are cross approved so they can come to Seward and teach we can go there and teach. So we can increase their capacity by bringing our forty courses there and they can increase their capacity by bringing their staff to our simulators. They have simulators as well but ours are a little bit larger so by doing that we're able to share resources and integrate training and make it more cost effective training program for the state of Alaska.

Jason: Again that that makes perfect sense sure you’re sharing resources for integrating your training programs so we can get that training to Alaskans in the most cost effective way.

Jason: So let's not forget a third vital element to workforce development Alaskan employers, how does this consortium benefit Alaskan employers?

Cathy: Benefit to employees is that they can hire Alaskans for Alaskan jobs so they won't have to look outside of the state to find a skilled maritime work force. You know Alaska has forty seven thousand miles of coastline, so we have a need for trained maritime workforce.

Cathy: On those forty seven thousand miles of shoreline and employers often have to look elsewhere to get mariners to do the work on tugs and barges in the ferry system. All of that at sea work gets done by bringing the training out to Alaskans. Training them up in their home communities so local employers can have a local work force that they can pull from when they need to staff their barges and tugs and all that.

Jason: Perfect so that's a really clear picture of how this consortium benefits Alaskan jobseekers Alaskan employers and the state of Alaska as a whole. So we've got this great consortium this collaboration is efficient bring training to Alaskans and getting employers the trained work force they need, but what I also heard was that our consortium has applied to become a domestic maritime center of excellence which sounds great but can you explain exactly what that is.

Cathy: Sure the domestic maritime center of excellence was we lovingly call D. M. C. O. E. is a federal designation that came out of federal legislation that was signed into law in December of twenty seventeen and basically they're looking at the different bodies of water surrounding the United States the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, that Pacific, the Gulf of Alaska, Arctic Ocean and they're looking to shore up small community and technical colleges that can teach and train a local work force. Call it a domestic work force but basically it's a local workforce. All workforce development is local what we need for workforce development in Seward is not the same as what they need Nome, and not the same as what they need to Ketchikan, it's very localized.

Cathy: And so when the federal government took a look at what was going on the training that was happening in the maritime work force wasn't as local as they'd like it to be so they put this legislation in place and now in Alaska rather than the university and AVTEC applying separately which wouldn't make very good sense, it wouldn’t be very cost effective.  We joined forces and apply collectively for the status.

Jason: So what are the requirements to qualify to apply for a center of excellence designation.

Cathy: The requirements are long and drawn out and I don't have time to explain them today but basically the main thing is you have to be on one of the bodies of water. So we qualify because we're on the Gulf of Alaska and the Arctic Ocean, plus a Bering Straights and all the others that are around Alaska. So you have to be on one of the in bodies of water, plus you have to have been in business prior to 2017 when the legislation was put into place, and you have to offer what they're calling ashore and afloat careers. An ashore career is welding, harbormaster training, coding, vessel maintenance, repairs, ship building, so those are ashore careers.

Cathy: Afloat careers include “on deck”, which is steward, captain, mates, all those folks that drive the ship and operate the ship. Or the ones that are in the engine room, which is your wiper, oilers, junior engineers. Those are afloat careers, and generally those are the U. S. Coast Guard approved ones. The ones on the shore are generally not Coast Guard approved.

Cathy: So you have the Coast Guard approved one for the afloat, and the ones that get the ship's build and keep them operational on the shore.

Jason: Wow okay so. Hearing that list of all those different types of jobs really highlights. How vast the variety is of job opportunities that you're supporting and why it's so important that we collaborate the training to be able to cover all those things. So for my last question.

Jason: I'd like to ask what is the significance of being designated a center of excellence I mean we've applied to be designated as a center of excellence we think we're going to get it because we've got all of those great qualifications that we need. What is that get Alaska what is the significance of being designated a center of excellence.

Cathy: Well it gives us presence on the national stage and that's maybe not a big deal to a lot of people but often presence on the national stage comes with funding, and so are that's not our main purpose but it's an outcome that we are aiming for because even though we're working together and we have shared resources. There's still a need for more resources and so being able to get funds from the federal government through this collaboration makes is very strong makes ask, if you will. It's challenging to get federal funds because Alaska so small in numbers right, so you have seven hundred and thirty five thousand people that live in Alaska. And we are  difficult to serve because of our geographic space. So by the time you put together a program and you put all the money in that it's going to take to serve Alaskans, your cost per student is so high that the feds get sticker shock and, very little money flows are direction for these big federal grants, but by working together with the university address AVTEC will be able to provide a strong showing and in addition to that having the domestic maritime center of excellence status will give us also that leg up, We’ll be on the mailing list.

Cathy: When the money hits the ground we're mailing list.

Jason: Well thanks so much for telling us about this exciting work that's happening, this the smart work that's happening, to better use the resources that we have and also to attract more funding so that we can help Alaskan jobseekers businesses and the state of Alaska as a whole.

Jason: Well this is been the first Alaska department of labor and workforce development podcast thank you Cathy LeCompte for talking about the Alaska maritime education consortium with us today thank you listeners for joining us we hope you found the show informative and that you'll join us again for our next podcast coming soon. Good night.