It was like any other commencement typical for this time of year. Students pumped their fists to hoots and cheers as they walked up to receive their diplomas. Proud parents stood and snapped photos. There were broad smiles and hugs. It was a celebration of accomplishment.
Except this celebration took place on a shop floor at a Mukilteo industrial park, surrounded by workbenches, drill presses and other industrial manufacturing equipment.
Thursday marked the graduation of the Work Force Development Center’s Class of 2016, 59 students enrolled at area high schools, who have completed a course of on-the-job training to learn skills in assembly, machining and manufacturing as they build parts for customers in the aerospace, automotive and other industries.
The Work Force Development Center is a nonprofit vocational training program that works with 36 school districts in Snohomish, Island and north King counties to offer a path to careers for at-risk and disadvantaged high school juniors and seniors.
Dave Trader, the WFDC’s chief executive, in welcoming family and friends to the ceremony, remarked that three years ago the center graduated 33 students from its program and now has grown to a graduating class of 59. By next fall, the center will welcome 99 students for the 2016-17 school year, Trader said.
Gov. Jay Inslee, who gave the keynote address, praised the graduates. “You’ve worked hard to make this happen,” he said. Inslee told the graduates that the resilience they’ve already show in reaching this goal should reassure them when they have a hard day or hit a rough patch in their lives.
“You’ll get through just as you got through this chapter of your life,” he said.
Hailey Yourist, who graduated from Stanwood High School in March, is also now a WFDC graduate and was selected as the student speaker for the center’s graduation ceremony.
Yourist, like many of her fellow classmates, admitted she wasn’t the best student at Stanwood High. Although she will now walk with the rest of her high school class next month, Yourist struggled with a learning disability and frequently cut classes, until a teacher pulled her aside and recommended the Mukilteo center as her best option to avoid dropping out.
Eager to try something different, she quickly agreed. “My only question was: When’s the interview?” she said.
Yourist had always enjoyed working with her hands and quickly felt at home at the center.
“I thought of it was my way out of school,” she said. “But now I know it was my way into a career.”
Yourist now is a full-time employee at the center’s second shop, operating its computer-controlled machining equipment. She’ll continue her studies, and recently earned a scholarship, but will pursue her career in machining.
This is as much a paying job as it is a classroom for the students.
Students are building parts that will be used in the production of airliners and other finished products, explained Aleitha Love, a quality insurance inspector for WFDC.
Set out for display was a student-built air-filtration cabinet, or plenum, that will soon go into a Boeing 777.
The parts and assemblies that the students produce are built to the exacting specifications of Boeing and other customers. The company has enough trust in the work of the students, Love said, that it doesn’t check the quality of the work again once it leaves WFDC.
And if the shop floor, the industrial equipment and the attention to detail weren’t enough of a reminder that these students are performing real jobs in the real world, there was this:
“Tomorrow is a work day,” Trader reminded his students after the diplomas were handed out. “We expect you back.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
