Hawthorne High School, part of the Centinela Valley Union High School District, is in Southern California, about 15 miles from Los Angeles. They recently celebrated 23 students from the schools Manufacturing and Engineering program who graduated from South Bay Workforce Investment Board’s (SBWIB) Aero-Flex Pre-Apprenticeship program. As a longtime SME PRIME school, Hawthorne embodies all that makes the initiative effective: inspiring, preparing and supporting the next generation of manufacturing talent.
The Hawthorne High School students successfully earned certificates by completing the three-track Aero-Flex Pre-Apprenticeship program requirements. Track one, called Blueprint for Workplace success, focused on work readiness training. Track two utilized Tooling U-SME’s occupational skills training curriculum, while track three provided a glimpse of each student’s future by training in a workplace environment. As a reward for their successful completion of the program each student received a $500 stipend at their graduation ceremony.
“We are proud of the dedication of these students; 23 enrolled and all of them completed the requirements,” stated SBWIB Executive Director, Jan Vogel.
The Aero-Flex Pre-Apprenticeship program aligned with Hawthorne High School is an employer-directed “earn and learn” model for engineering, allowing individual employers to design the program’s curriculum. The program provides participating high school students with an awareness of opportunity within manufacturing along with the valuable workplace skills needed to succeed in a professional setting.
SME PRIME schools like Hawthorne High School are at the center of the program’s goal of directly enhancing manufacturing and engineering talent through the establishment of current, relevant and applicable manufacturing in high schools informed by private industry. SME PRIME provides high schools with modern manufacturing equipment, tailored curriculum, scholarship and credentialing opportunities and more.
