The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates a large need for engineers over the next ten years.

That's due to job growth in the field and replacing those leaving the workforce.

A new GE Appliances and University of Louisville initiative targeting students in Bullitt County is looking to help fill this gap.

And our look at education news, Our Chip Polston spoke with GE Appliances representatives about the program designed to increase educational opportunities for Bullitt County students.

For nearly 100 years, the J.B.

Speed School of Engineering at U of L has been producing engineering graduates, and at a time when they are needed more than ever, the college is collaborating with GE Appliances and the county school system to ease the transition into engineering school.

Here to talk about the initiative is Katina Whitlock, senior manager of Community Engagement Edge Appliances.

Thanks so much for being with us today.

Thanks for having me.

So this is not a new connection for GE with the Bullet County School system.

You all have been working with them for some time, correct?

We have.

We've been working with Bulloch County Public School System for over five years.

I work in community engagement.

It's part of our corporate communications team.

But our engineers are committed to the places where they grew up.

Right.

So we are here in Louisville, Kentucky, where it's our US headquarters.

And we had an engineer, the group in Butler County.

That's where his kids go to school.

So he said, you know, I really want to expose the opportunities that we have available as a company to the kids who are right outside of Jefferson County.

So that was a question that I also had about kind of what that connection was back to Board County.

I didn't know if it was proximity to the park, but it really is as simple as an engineer who grew up there and had kids in the system that wanted to get back into that community.

True.

That's our strategy.

We know that as a major employer in this community, it's our obligation and our desire to actually grow our our own.

And so Mike Abundant, who leads that program.

He is a person from Kentucky, grew up in that area.

His kids go to Butler County Public schools.

He's a speed school graduate and he's one of our lead engineers.

And so it's an opportunity for us as a business to fully invest in what he was already doing and expand that beyond just our partnership with Jefferson County Public Schools.

That's really cool.

So based on the response you had from working with the kids in Bulloch County, at some point you all look at that and say, What could we do to help get these kids into engineering school at U of L and then bring them into the fold at GE Appliances?

What does that program look like now?

So what that looks like, it started out as just teaching them engineering basics, right?

So like, what is the concept of engineering?

And so for a lot of those kids, it was the first time they fully understood what an engineer was.

And we believe that all of us are engineers at some point from creation to innovation.

And so it was giving them those those tools and that language.

A lot of those students may go into trade programs.

We need people in trade programs.

But then some of them said, I really want to be the innovators.

I want to create those appliances that people are using in their homes.

And so we have an excellent relationship with the University of Louisville, and it's been School of Engineering, which is a national fully known engineering school.

And so we use the opportunity to say these are kids that we know can make the curriculum.

They can be competitive in that environment because we've already invested in them from middle school all the way through high school.

And speed is not an easy school to get into.

I mean, it's competitive to get in there.

But I just think it's interesting that you all have been able to put this together to make it easier for those kids at a Bully county to go to speed and get that education that in your all's view, they really need to be part of the GE Appliances family.

Absolutely.

I think it speaks to the quality of the programs that we offer.

So when you think about a lot of like after school programs or even during school programs, we have engineers on our team who are developing curriculum.

So we have a very similar program at Dallas High School here in Louisville, where we actually built the manufacturing center at Dale's High School.

And so what Mike has done with Bullitt County Public Schools is he's developed an engineering curriculum.

So students are familiar when they are applying to speed school.

They are aware of what that will look like.

They understand how calculus and all the math and the science that goes into becoming an engineer.

They fully have an understanding of what that looks like.

How badly do you all need engineers at this point?

Is it really kind of critical mass for you all needing to get people into these roles?

And is that part of the reason why you want to establish that pipeline?

There is a critical mass for engineers and people who work in stem across our country.

When we think about like what happens next, right.

We know that so much of that will be based upon technology and innovation.

So as a business that's based here in Louisville, Kentucky, we want to make sure that we give that opportunity to people who live in this community first.

And so when you think about where those opportunities usually come from, rural communities are often left behind.

And so for us, it's a very targeted effort to make sure that we're including people of color in those programs.

We're including women, and then people who are coming from rural communities.

So it's a really interesting Programable look forward to seeing how everything comes together with a Katina Whitlock, senior manager of Community Engagement and GE Appliances.

Thanks so much for being with us.

Thanks to.

Renee.

Back to you.

Thank you, Chip.

The first group of Bully County students participating in the program should enter speed school in the fall of 2025 and would complete their graduate degrees by the year 2030.