Whelen Engineering: Providing a Blueprint for Partnerships

Claremont school district superintendent Jacqueline Guillette kept hearing there were manufacturing jobs in the area that went unfilled due to a lack of skilled workers. So Guillette got herself appointed to the Governor's Advanced Manufacturing Education Advisory Council in 2009. There she met John Olson, president of Whelen Engineering in Charlestown, a company she previously hadn't heard of that designs and manufactures warning and signal devices. Whelen employs about 700 people, from those with certificates up to Ph.D engineers.

While carpooling to meetings, the two swapped stories. During one ride Guillette told Olson she was planning to retire (it had been nine years), so Olson hired her to research, create and run manufacturing classes for high schoolers at Whelen. The classes meet all school district curriculum requirements so students receive academic credit.

During 2011-2012, the first year of the project, 41 students traveled to Whelen. Students learn about programming machines, measuring materials to microscopic specificity, reading plans, and measuring the tolerance of materials. In feedback forms they stated, Don't change a thing, but make the classes longer, and I can't predict what tools or anything they can do to make this course more advanced, but here at Whelen they have some machines I have only seen in my dreams.

And it's not just those 41 students who benefited. Olson and Guillette wrote a plan for incorporating hands on education into the school curriculum and have handed out free CDs outlining their plan (including labor, legal and curriculum challenges) to more than 250 schools, as far away as Texas and Wisconsin. Olson even pays Guillette to travel to give talks about their plan.

 Whelen is stepping up and putting all this money and resources into this kind of visionary thinking. Are they gathering employees as they are doing this? Not really. This is really building for the future, Guillette says. For Whelen that future includes a 100,000-square-foot addition, now under construction, and eventually adding about 50 workers. It has hired two students from the program.

High school students travel to Whelen for an hour-long class daily for 42 to 45 days. But Guillette and Olson are not stopping with high schoolers. The pair also started a three-week middle school program where Whelen technology is sent to the class, and students tour Whelen at the end of the program. They are also planning a STEM camp that will take place at Whelen this summer for middle and high school students in the area. I have learned over the years that education cannot do it all and education cannot do it in a silo, Guillette says.