Sixty students in Morgan County working manufacturing jobs through school program

By Wes Tomlinson

For the Enquirer  

A work-based learning program in Hartselle City Schools has expanded its reach across Morgan County to include 60 high school students this year who are gaining insight into the workforce by working in local companies and acquiring practical skills. 

All students in the program are juniors or seniors who attend Hartselle City Schools, Morgan County Schools or Decatur City Schools and work 20 hours per week at Cerrowire or Sonoco, Hartselle manufacturers that have partnered with the schools.  

Upon launching in 2018, the Tiger Launch program included only 12 students, all from Hartselle High School. Elisa Harris, career and technical coordinator for Hartselle City Schools, said the program has grown partly because of post-high school apprenticeship programs offered at Cerrowire and Sonoco. 

Mason Moore, a Falkville High School student enrolled in the Tiger Launch program, works at the Sonoco plant in Hartselle. Photo by Jeronimo Nisa.

“We have this building (at Sonoco) now for them to work in, too,” Harris said. “Before, they were behind Hartselle Junior High in what is now our classroom or shop area for our modern manufacturing class, and we could only fit eight students in there.” 

At Sonoco, the students in the Tiger Launch program work in a designated area of the Sonoco facility, apart from the main plant area, assembling wooden reels and distributing them to customers. Tiger Launch workers at Cerrowire typically work in the shipping department, but brand manager Phil Schmidt said they will relocate some of those employees to the company’s new MC cable facility. 

After the Tiger Launch program started, the wire manufacturing company Cerrowire became a customer of Sonoco. 

In addition to earning $15.86 an hour, students also receive one and a half school credits per semester, totaling three credits a year. Officials say the program benefits both the students and the companies.  

“At the plant, there’s about 320-something employees, and 10% of that workforce came from (Tiger Launch) and our retention rate at Sonoco is 75%,” said Richard Long, the Tiger Launch supervisor at Sonoco. “We’ve been very fortunate to bring folks through this program and teaching them those work skills they need to know and getting them prepared.” 

Long said during the school months, they also reward the students for earning good grades and getting to work on time. 

“If they have perfect attendance on a week-to-week basis, we give them another dollar an hour,” Long said. “Also, we have a $300 bonus for all A’s and $200 for all B’s.” 

Brian Kilpatrick, vice president of operations for Sonoco, said the retention rate is even higher for employees the company hires who came from the Tiger Launch program. 

“Over the last three years, we have had 18 apprentices who have joined us that came out of the Tiger Launch program,” Kilpatrick said. “The ones who make it through that program are very reliable employees.” 

Hartselle High graduates Brody Tapscott, Aaron Barley and Webb Harris began their manufacturing careers as juniors and seniors in Tiger Launch. Tapscott and Barley now work at Sonoco, and Harris works at Cerrowire. All were hired after high school graduation, continuing what they learned in high school. 

Harris, 21, went into the program at age 17 and said performing entry-level tasks like cutting wire for customers and doing quality inspections on finished products placed him ahead of novice workers when he began Cerrowire’s apprenticeship program after he graduated high school. He attended Calhoun Community College through that apprenticeship, majoring in industrial maintenance, and now works as a maintenance technician. 

“For me starting in the program at Tiger Launch at 17, it’s only taken me four to five years to get a full-time maintenance job, and I’ve now finished college,” Harris said. “The program has made the ladder a lot easier to climb when coming up through the company. Instead of not knowing, it made these job duties a lot clearer to us.” 

Harris said the program taught him practical skills that apply to every job market and shaped the work ethic he has today. 

“It helped my time management because I was having to show up at 6 in the morning and work until 10 and then go to school, and then even after school I would come here and work,” Harris said. “Just for the fact of being comfortable in the manufacturing and industrial setting and just having that base knowledge coming in really helped, and I wasn’t having to ask my bosses what to do.” 

Prior to entering the program, 21-year-old Barley had been working at Kroger and wanted a change of scenery. After he graduated from Hartselle High, he began attending Calhoun, where he completed the college’s FAME program, or Federation for Advanced Manufacturing Education. He graduated in May with a degree in advanced manufacturing technology. 

Barley currently works as a maintenance technician for Sonoco. 

“To be 100% honest, I really had no interest in (manufacturing) when I first started the Tiger Launch program,” Barley said. “I wasn’t liking it at first but slowly, I started to build an interest in it and realized that this is what I want to do. I like the environment, the people I work with and I like working in small groups.” 

Tapscott, 20, is finishing up his studies at Calhoun where he is in the Excellence In Process Industrial Controls, or EPIC, program, and he works as an operator at Sonoco. He majors in advanced manufacturing with a focus on process technology and is considering going into engineering. 

After being accepted and enrolled in the FAME or EPIC programs, students begin working with their sponsor company during the summer before beginning coursework in the fall. Cerrowire and Sonoco are among the sponsor companies. 

Tapscott began work in the Tiger Launch program as a senior and chose to work third shift from 5:30-9 p.m. 

“The flexibility they offered was really the biggest selling point I would say,” Tapscott said. “I was working retail before that and I put six months into that and, of course, come senior year I realized I can’t handle working this schedule while going to school. For someone like me who was taking AP classes, my schedule wasn’t as flexible as some others, so that third shift with Tiger Launch worked perfectly for me.” 

Tapscott said what initially began as a convenient high school job led to the career he now pursues, and he credits the communication skills he has to the teamwork he learned in Tiger Launch, where proper communication is always vital “from the operator to maintenance.”