Cooper Tire ambassadors look to inspire students

Cooper Tire & Rubber Co., like many companies in the rubber industry, is trying to find ways to develop its talent pipeline. It realized that to do so, manufacturing needs to have a voice early on in a child's education.

The company has used Manufacturing Day as a platform. And in conjunction with the Manufacturing Institute's "Dream It. Do It." program, the company established its own "Dream Team," which consists of employees who serve as year-round ambassadors for manufacturing.

The team does a number of community outreach activities with local high schools and colleges, but the majority of them are centered around eighth graders, and the biggest is Manufacturing Day. The last two years Cooper has hosted events at all three of its plants for middle schoolers and offered the chance to experience what it's like to work in the rubber industry. Kids take on roles—for instance a tire builder—and work one-on-one with employees to learn the job.

Cooper Tire said it's reached 10,000 eighth graders through its Manufacturing Day programs.

"All year long, they're doing things out in the community to educate young people about careers in manufacturing, using themselves as a great example," a company spokeswoman said of the Dream Team. "There isn't really anything that communicates better than being able to go out into a group of young people or a classroom and talk about your experience in the manufacturing world."

The team now consists of about 40 people. The application process involves conversations with their supervisors on whether or not they'd be able to, at times, leave work to participate in some of these activities. It's a pretty eclectic group that generally consists of more early career employees. However, the spokeswoman said anyone can apply.

"For a whole generation of kids, they weren't necessarily steered into manufacturing careers," the spokeswoman said. "This is a long-lead kind of effort, but one of the things we thought we needed to do was go into this eighth grade/middle school area so that when those opinions (on a career) are being formed, manufacturing is also considered."

Starting the spark

The ambassadors main goal is to show kids that manufacturing can be a viable career. Jessica Sinak, a tire engineer in the technical department at Tupelo, Miss., joined the company right out of the University of Mississippi two years ago. But she wouldn't have had this opportunity had it not been for her 10th grade teacher, who told her she'd be a good engineer. Sinak looked into it, and it didn't take long for her to get inspired. She said the choice guided her decisions on college and her major.

While rubber didn't enter the equation until she applied at Cooper Tire, the fact that she had exposure to any element of manufacturing helped eventually fill Cooper's talent pipeline. Now that she's in the industry, she wants to make sure the next generation has the same opportunity.

"I wanted to be able to provide the same support I got when I was younger, making someone want to go into this avenue," Sinak said. "Had someone not told me about it when I was younger, I wouldn't have gone into it, and I love it. For me, personally, it's the engineering aspect of it.

"My whole career path in life is based on a teacher telling me I would be good at engineering. If we can provide that spark for somebody else, I think that would be great."

Sinak said she doesn't have an elaborate pitch; instead she basically describes her job and her day-to-day duties.

"They get really interested and start asking questions that they didn't know they had," Sinak said. "One particular girl I noticed, she came up and had her notepad and started writing all these things as we were going through the process and Cooper specifically. She was just so interested in what we had to say and what we were doing."

Being a guide

Luke Schroeder, mechanical project engineer at Findlay, Ohio, joined the team for similar reasons. He worked at the plant in 2008 as part of a co-op program, and then was offered a job in 2010 after graduating from the University of Toledo. His introduction to manufacturing came through his brother, who also works at Cooper's Findlay plant.

Schroeder said he is one of eight children. He grew up on a farm, so his brother was his first exposure to manufacturing. He said those stories inspired him to then pursue his degree in mechanical engineering.

"Him telling his good stories and all the stuff he enjoyed doing at work and all the vast amount of people he got to work with day in and day out was really intriguing," Schroeder said. "It pretty much set my goals for exactly what I was going to do in college."

Being the third oldest among eight siblings with an overall age gap of 20 years, he's used to being around a lot of younger people. He signed up for the Dream Team and is the captain of the Findlay team, which he said ranges from six to eight people depending on the year.

He wants to give kids who may not have a close tie to manufacturing that same contact with the industry his brother game him.

"That whole relationship I had with my brother, getting me exposure to manufacturing and talking about how much he enjoyed it, I was just thinking about people who don't have other siblings to give them that," Schroeder said. "The Dream Team was a great outlet to do that because there are a lot of people who are single kids and don't have people who can bring that exposure to them."

And another positive byproduct of the program is that employees who may have not otherwise gotten the chance to work together now can.

"The benefits of this are beyond even building the work force pipeline," the spokeswoman said. "You have people from Cooper who had no reason to work together before this program. You may have a tire builder from one plant working next to an engineer from another, and they wouldn't have had an opportunity to meet or work together without a program like this. There are bonds being made. I think that's something millennials look for, to make a contribution to society."