20-year-old Adam Toler taps buttons on a control pad, programing a small yellow robot, about the size of a cat. The robot’s arm jolts to life.
“I get to work with robots and get them to do cool things,” Toler, who’s about to graduate with an associates degree, said. “I get to work with anything that’s automated and make it work.”
Toler is standing inside one of the classrooms for the instrumentation and automation program at New River Community College, in Pulaski County.
Toler was the only college student in Virginia to win a national scholarship and named a New Century Workforce Scholar. It’s the only national award of its kind specifically for students getting an associate’s degree and going straight into the workforce.
The stigma of pursuing a trade, instead of going to a 4-year-college, pushes some away from community college.
But Toler didn’t see it that way. In high school he considered becoming a CPA, but changed his mind. “Working at a desk all day doing math, even though I love math, would not have been good for me,” Toler said.
He realized he’s a better learner if he can do something hands-on. And he loves working with robots, programming them and fixing them.
“I think what we do is cool. I’ll finish something sometime and I’m like, I didn’t even know this existed and this is awesome.”
Most of the equipment they practice with at the college look like equipment at actual Virginia companies. Their classes are designed to mimic real workplaces, said Toler’s professor, Montie Fleshman.
“We’ll go to a company, spend a day with them,” Fleshman said. “See what kinds of instruments they’re using, what kind of calibrators they’re using, what kind of meters they’re using. See what our students are missing, what were the holes.”
Fleshman said he likes to give students a chance to try, and fail. Even though this does mean a lot of equipment gets broken.
“And say, ok you play with it, expecting some things to be hooked up wrong and blown up,” ,” Fleshman said.
Fleshman clarifies that no students have actually been seriously injured during these missteps. “I would rather them do that here, in a controlled atmosphere, rather than them get 600 volts at work and die,” Fleshman said.
In another classroom, Toler points to an orange robot, designed to grab and move objects, anything from car parts to medical equipment. Against the wall, there are two street lights. Their automation class practiced programming those too.
Many analysts expect companies to vastly increase their use of automation over the next decade. That could mean millions of jobs replaced by robots.
Toler said he has mixed feelings about all of this. But he points out, there are lots of skills, like creative thinking and problem solving, that can’t be replaced by automation.
“Who is going to fix the robots?” Toler said. “No matter how well we design them, there will always be wear and tear on them. So you need people to fix them. You need people to maintain them. You need people to design them and engineers.”
Toler said he thinks more people should consider learning hands-on skills, particularly anyone in high school or in between careers who’s struggling to figure out what they want to do.
“If you can find a trade that you enjoy, whether it’s carpentry, anything, become an apprentice in it so you’re working with your hands,” Toler said. “And that’s how you learn. It really is something that I think is dying in our society.”
This summer, Toler is headed to work at a paper-mill in Richmond. In the fall, he plans to return to community college to get two more associates degrees in electrical engineering.
This story is part of an occasional series from Radio IQ about students training for jobs in high-demand careers.
