New program uses the European model to give students training for advanced manufacturing through a hybrid model blending an apprenticeship with coursework at Salt Lake Community College.
A Swiss company is bringing its apprenticeship model to Utah to build a skilled workforce for its new facility in this country.
The Swiss model, applauded by the Trump administration and broadly supported by the public, has students split time between classes and paid, on-the-job training to get skills for a specific industry.
Stadler Rail, a Swiss manufacturing company that has contracts to build trains in California and Texas, decided to replicate the apprenticeship system after finding a dearth of employees with the correct skills for its U.S. facility in Salt Lake City.
“A lot of our leadership are from Switzerland and went through those programs,” said Charlotte Thalhammer, a spokeswoman for Stadler Rail. “It just made sense.”
And while Stadler doesn’t expect the program to fix its employee shortage problem, which is fueled in part by Utah’s record low unemployment rates, Thalhammer said it will help them recruit a more skilled workforce. When the company opened up in Utah, little local training existed for the manufacturing skills they needed.