High School Program

A common problem many manufacturing companies face is the lack of interest from high school and college students in pursuing a career in manufacturing. Finding skilled workers is a common concern throughout the manufacturing sector. With the resounding success of Custom University, we looked to further enhance educational opportunities, ways to share our program, and to give back to our local communities. We held an education forum at our facility attended by our U.S. Congressman, state and city representatives as well as professors and deans from local and state colleges and universities, administrators from area high schools, as well as business professionals, to discuss the need to train young students and get them interested in a career in manufacturing.

From this forum, we realized we needed to reach out to students who may not consider manufacturing as a career. With manufacturing now being an economic driver, the last 10-20 years has seen many changes in manufacturing. There are now a lot more career choices with varying skill requirements. We are proud that our facilities are very clean, well-lit, climate-controlled, safe work environments featuring state of the art equipment and machinery. These pieces of equipment need a formal education to be proficient at and finding those skilled employees is proving more difficult each year.

In working with high school administrators and department leaders, we formed a joint partnership with a local high school and created our high school internship program. The selected candidates’ main job is to learn. These students while still going to high school spend several hours a week at our facility studying a year-long curriculum taught by college instructors. The co-op students and selected Custom Aluminum employees study engineering, math, CNC machining and programming, metrology, welding, robotics, quality statistics, and standard operating procedures and methodologies. These students work with department employees and our customers in order to learn the process from initial design conception to actual part production. The real-world understanding these students take from our program is immeasurable going on to college. We are also proud to offer selected students full-ride scholarships to further their education and when graduated are offered full-time positions at Custom Aluminum Products. The students that have gone through our program are extremely excited to focus and study various manufacturing career paths that once graduated will further their careers with Custom Aluminum Products.