Recruiting the next generation: Rubber industry recognizes importance of youth outreach

It's no secret the rubber industry has an aging work force. But how does the industry begin to recruit the next generation that will carry it forward?

Lakisha Miller-Barclay, ACS Rubber Division executive director and CEO, says it's all about making a strong first impression and piquing the interest of young minds when they least expect it.

And the International Elastomer Conference makes for a perfect opportunity for just this.

"If you listen to the people in the industry and you ask them questions like what got you interested, a lot of times they'll tell you about something very similar to what we're doing right now," she said, noting the IEC's Experience Elastomers Outreach program.

A "little, five-minute exposure" could go a long way, she said, depending on the impact it has on a student.

At the IEC, which took place Oct. 10-13 in Knoxville, Tenn., local students from three Knox County high schools participated in the conference's youth outreach program.

While this year's program only brought 12 high school students—due to the schools being out for a fall break—Heather Maimone, the Rubber Division's membership and outreach director, said the event, which started back in 2017, usually brings in about 100 students.

"We had 12 wonderful students who came all on their own to meet here," Maimone said.

She said students typically attend the conference as part of a class field trip, but this year's high schoolers attended due to their own interest upon hearing about the opportunity from their schools.

The program breaks the rubber industry down into three different workshops—raw materials, mixing and molding, and testing.

In the first workshop, Maimone said students get a look at different raw materials within the industry and make a rubber bouncy ball by combining latex and vinegar.

And by using the analogy of baking sugar cookies, the second workshop teaches students about mixing and molding in the industry.

Maimone said this helps the students visualize the mixing and molding process. "And when they smell the cookies, they're going to remember it."

In the third workshop, the students learn about testing, where they stretch different compounds of tensile strips to test their strength using dumbbells and "get to watch some stuff break."

Following the workshops, the students walk the show floor of the conference and speak to participating exhibitors, like Alpha Technologies, AirBoss and Zeon.

Sarah Elliott, a science teacher within the Knox County district, said programs like this are important for engaging students and getting them interested in STEM careers.

If it weren't for the fall break, she said, she would have brought all her classes to the conference.

Being in the classroom is a "great experience," she said, "but I don't think (students) value the classroom as much as they do an experience like this. Because this is so much more hands-on than anything we could do in the classroom."

It's events and outreach like this that pull young minds into the industry, Elliot said.

"That's when you get kids who weren't expecting to be gotten," she said. "When you get kids who are just doing the mundane high school routine because they know that they have to, … they're the ones who are like, 'Oh, this could be fun, I could do this for a living.'

"This sort of out-of-the-box learning experience is so much more valuable for some kids who just don't … know where their spark is yet," she said.

Mason Ruzecki, a senior within the Knox County Schools, said when he heard about the program, his thoughts on attending were: "Why not?"

He said he wants to study chemical engineering when he goes to college, so it made sense to attend the IEC.

"I came, and I'm not disappointed," he said, adding that he learned just how far reaching the rubber industry is throughout the program.

"I didn't realize how much rubber there was in, like, everyday life," he said. "Instead of just car tires, it's everywhere. …It's pretty cool."

Harshita Nagar, a freshman within the school district, said she appreciated the hands-on experience that she doesn't often get in the classroom.

"I don't really know a lot about rubber," she said, "but I feel like this is really fun."

She said she wanted to try the IEC's outreach program during her break after hearing about it from her teacher.

"I thought, why not try it … and get something out of it," she said.

Just as important as reaching the high schoolers is fostering and encouraging the interest that already is there among young professionals and college students.

Miller-Barclay said on the last day of the IEC that a couple of college students who had volunteered for the event had asked her how they could continue their involvement in the industry and if they could come back to the conference after graduating.

"These two students have been so hungry to be part of this industry that it's our duty and responsibility to make sure they have the exposure," Miller-Barclay said.

She said students see firsthand how companies, clients and competitors interact at the conference as they mature through the industry.

And when it comes to engaging the next generation, she said, the industry needs to remember to include students and young professionals from all kinds of backgrounds.

When the division first launched the student initiative, Miller-Barclay said she first reached out to students in chemical engineering and polymer backgrounds, but she noticed students with different degrees were interested.

"And I said, 'Why would we exclude them?'

"We know there are work force shortages, we know that there's a lack of work force development, so why not reach into these other degrees and say, 'Hey, there's a whole industry over here. Come see what you can do over here.' "

Miller-Barclay said students from all sorts of degrees have found potential careers within the industry.

"Sometimes we have to remember that our reach is not just to specific degrees, but it's to an entire generation to tell them and show them that there's a spectrum of jobs available from one end to the other."

She said the industry can get hung up on statistics as it tries to keep track of how many students attended outreach programs and how many converted to the industry.

"That's sometimes harder to quantify than we think, because those two students are going to go back to school, they're going to talk to seven more students about what they did at this show, and we're not going to count those seven students because we don't know them," she said.

"But the reach is there."

Sometimes, the reach is much sooner. Sometimes, the industry comes to the students instead of calling for the students to come to it.

Akron Rubber Development Laboratory, or ARDL, does just this.

While also a participant of the Rubber Division's Experience Elastomers Outreach program, the Akron-based company has outreach programs of its own.

Most recently, the company formed a new partnership with the local Bath Elementary School in the spring, where it provided 125 kits for students to build Styrofoam race cars for their unit on force in motion.

As part of the project, the fifth graders raced cars they made of Styrofoam, 3D-printed parts and CO2 cartridges as they learned about aerodynamics, friction and air resistance.

Kylie Knipp, education coordinator and technical adviser at ARDL—who also ran the testing workshop at this year's IEC—said reaching out to young students in the community not only gets kids interested in STEM and manufacturing, but it also helps the rubber industry's image.

"In general, the rubber industry has always had a stigma to it that it's kind of this dirty industry, and that's not really the case," Knipp said, noting the industry is full of new technology and opportunity.

"We've been trying to kind of break that stigma, so that's why we want to do a lot of community outreach and show people that it's not what you think," she said. "It's not that dirty industry anymore, things have come a long way."

Partnerships within the community can be critical avenues for breaking this stigma while also garnering interest in the industry among young students.

"You want to grow the industry, you want to try to get the younger generations to be interested in it," Knipp said.

ARDL made its partnership with the elementary school through the Summit Educational Services Center's Business Advisory Council in Summit County, Ohio.

She said a member of the council connected Knipp with Diana Racin, the STEM teacher at Bath Elementary School.

Racin said the school previously purchased the kits for the project, but they had lost their supplier. When she shared the project and predicament with the advisory council, they made the connection with ARDL.

"They had asked us if we could possibly help find materials to re-create the kits or if we would be willing to actually make the kits ourselves," Knipp said.

By fall 2021, ARDL decided to make the kits, and the company's engineers volunteered their time to put the materials together. By that following winter, ARDL even purchased a 3D printer to make the wheels.

Knipp said ARDL already had planned to buy a 3D printer for modeling for its clients, but the outreach helped kickstart this initiative.

The company also got the University of Akron involved in the project, she added.

By April, ARDL had printed about 400 of the 500 wheels needed for the project, but the team was coming close to its May deadline.

"We had gotten our 3D printer by the end of March," Knipp said. And by April ARDL began running into "issues" as they worked out the kinks of a new machine, and production of the wheels was running slower than anticipated.

Knipp said ARDL contacted the university about the project and the university confirmed it had the materials and print time available and was interested in helping the local community.

"They just jumped right in, and within a week they had finished the other 100 (wheels) that we had needed," Knipp said. "The same day that I asked they started printing."

Racin told Rubber News that ARDL's and the university's support had been "wonderful," adding that having the local support not only helped make the project possible, but having real-world engineers available helps students understand new career opportunities.

"It's great when we have people that can come out and share their experience and paint that vision of (working in STEM), what it looks like," Racin said. "Engineers can come in and talk with our kids, and they talk about different jobs and what it would look like in different types of facilities."

This year, ARDL didn't assist with assembly of the race cars with the students, but it did assist with the race day and got to see the students' finished—and souped up—hot rods.

Knipp said plans are in the works to expand ARDL's partnership with Bath Elementary and this project.

"It's been something that we've always focused on, engaging the community and getting people interested in rubber," Knipp said.

During the Oct. 25 Rubber News Livestream, "ACS Rubber Division IEC Wrap-up," Miller-Barclay said there is an underlying interest to break into new industries within younger generations.

But it's up to the industry to reach out.

"It is imperative that the rubber industry continues to be in front of students who did not know there was a rubber industry," she said. "… We need to solicit and reach out to the next generation if we want to make sure that this industry is sustained."