Four CTC students sign with P&G apprenticeship program

Four Cape Girardeau Career and Technology Center students put pen to paper Friday, Feb. 2, becoming the first crop of students to accept electrical technician apprenticeships with Procter & Gamble through CTC.

Makayla Braeuner, Garrett Joshlin, Drake Dannenmueller and Forrest LaBelle each signed their apprenticeship papers at CTC, surrounded by friends, family, educators and representatives of P&G.

"I'm looking forward to learning new things and helping future generations succeed and get jobs early on," Joshlin said. "I think it's a good thing for us."

Two of the students, Dannenmueller and LaBelle, have parents who work at P&G, and LaBelle's grandfather also worked for the company.

CTC director Brock Crowley echoed sentiments about the students expressed by electrical trades instructor Danny Broach during the ceremony.

"They are some of our top students," Crowley said. "They work hard, they show up, they do what they're supposed to when they're supposed to and we feel comfortable putting them in a situation like this. We trust that they will go and do a great job for Procter & Gamble, and that's part of the process for us.

"They go through an interview process as a part of this apprenticeship program where Procter & Gamble interviews them as well. It's like they're interviewing for a job. We just provide, hopefully, that foot-in-the-door opportunity for them, and the rest is up to them."

The apprenticeship with P&G is a four-year program that is designed to give a student approximately two years of part-time training while in high school and two years of full-time training following graduation.

"When they come here as a junior, they complete year one and they start the summer apprenticeship program," Crowley said. "They have some experience under their belt, they have some training. Then, they would start an apprenticeship and then they would come back and it's back-and-forth. Once they come graduate here, they would go to work full time, but the apprenticeship would still carry on depending on what the occupation is."

CTC's apprenticeship program began with welding students after apprenticeship coordinator Brandon Bradshaw — who doubles as the center's welding instructor — was approached by a company looking to hire some of his students. The program has since grown to include electrical trades.

"We took some recommendations and started with my program, which is welding," Bradshaw said. "We have really good business relations here locally, so a lot of my students were doing internships already. Basically, the apprenticeship is just a formalized internship that we had already been doing without a whole lot of extra steps involved. So we started turning those internships into apprenticeships."

Now that CTC has added a second trade to its apprenticeship program, Crowley is hopeful it will continue to expand.

"We want this, in particular with the welding and electrical trades, to just continue to expand," Crowley said. "These are pathways for students to get connected with local business and industry, and that's our goal. If they want to go on to other things, that's fine, but we want to make those connections with our students and what we have to offer locally to increase the workforce to bring more jobs and to bring more companies in."

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