Washington Monthly - September/October 2020 - 43

about two stories high and take about nine months to master. Yet Vrbka has already been promoted twice and, at just 21
years old, now holds the position of group leader, a job that
typically requires 10 years of experience. "The next-youngest
person at my level is at least five years older than me," she
says. Vrbka is also getting that four-year degree after all. She's
building on the associate's degree she earned through FAME
to get a bachelor's in business administration, with tuition assistance from Toyota and FAME, in a recently added perk to
the program. "She can go as far as she wants," Nane Lawson,
Toyota Bodine's hiring manager and the advisory chair of Missouri FAME, told me.
While FAME's target demographic is recent high school
graduates, it has shown that it also can benefit older workers who want to "upskill" or "reskill" from different careers,
such as ShuJuanna Johnson, a FAME trainee in Arkansas.
Johnson, now 45, dropped out of high school when she became pregnant with her daughter. Although she eventually
earned her GED, she found herself trapped in relatively unskilled work, including 15 years at a cleaning company pressing and folding shirts. "My primary job was to make sure the
shirts were starched, make sure there were no spots or wrinkles," she said. "It wasn't taking me to the place in life where
I wanted to be. It wasn't a career. It was just a job, and I didn't
want to be living paycheck to paycheck."
Johnson heard about FAME from counselors at a local community college, decided to apply, and was accepted. "I never had any experience with professional behaviors.
I never even really thought about it," she said. She credits the
program with preparing her for a new work environment, as
well as improving her time management and communication
skills. Today, she is apprenticing at a Georgia-Pacific facility in
Crossett, Arkansas, where she is learning to maintain and repair the machinery that manufactures tissues, paper towels,
and other products. "It has really inspired me to do things that
I never thought I could do," she said.

o if FAME's approach is so effective, why aren't there
already many more programs just like it?
One reason is that demand for soft skills from
employers is relatively new. Another is that, although more
schools are beginning to realize the importance of noncognitive skills, teaching them isn't yet a core part of most
students' formal education. K-12 and higher education still
focus on academic achievement and technical knowledge, to
the particular disadvantage of workers without four-year college degrees or lower-income backgrounds.
But even as more educators recognize the importance of
soft skills, there's still a final problem: how to define it and
teach it. Definitional and pedagogical challenges abound.
What exactly, for instance, is "leadership," and how is it measured, let alone taught? While teaching and testing technical
skills is relatively straightforward-a welding student, for example, either performs a sound weld or doesn't-judging that
same welder's work habits and ability to get along with col-

leagues and superiors is much more nebulous and subjective.
What FAME has managed to do is transform the squishy concept of soft skills into clear, practicable expectations for behavior and offer students plenty of opportunities for practice,
assessment, and feedback.
While there has not yet been a formal evaluation of
FAME, one indicator of its potential is the eagerness of employers to invest in the program. In the spring of 2020, more
than 350 manufacturers were sponsoring trainees across a variety of sectors. In Missouri, the home of Glenn Dodge and
Camryn Vrbka, participating employers include, in addition
to Toyota Bodine, the leading commercial refrigerator maker True Manufacturing ("If you've ever gone to Walmart and
gotten a soda out of the coolers, that's a True refrigerator,"
Lagemann, the FAME instructor, said); plastic-bottle manufacturer Alpha Packaging; and local concerns such as Component Bar Products, which creates custom machined parts
for automotive and other industries; and C.A.P.S. Inc., a company that specializes in making plastic bottle caps for mustard and ketchup bottles and other food products. While the
coronavirus pandemic has caused delays in some states for the
2020-21 FAME cohort, founder Dennis Dio Parker said employer interest has remained surprisingly stable, even despite
the recession, and the program is working to adapt its format
for the new realities of the post-pandemic world. If anything,
Parker said, the pandemic could potentially prompt a renaissance of manufacturing in the United States as a result of
supply-chain disruptions around the world. Such "in-shoring," he said, could even prompt more interest from employers wanting workers trained to fill their needs.
Programs like FAME hold important lessons for the future of workforce training. First, training programs need to
make the teaching of soft skills a priority, and FAME shows
one way that can be done. Second, the success of the program's apprenticeship-style format also reinforces the value
of work-based learning, which deserves far greater attention
and investment. Research has found that the career-focused
programs producing the best results (as measured by higher
wages, for example, and more consistent employment) are
those that include work-based learning opportunities. FAME
is a potentially powerful addition to that repertoire of programs, particularly for its ability to draw investment from
employers and for its formalized soft-skills training. Its model is replicable in sectors beyond manufacturing, too. In fact,
the Manufacturing Institute, which now runs the program, is
already looking for other high-demand fields where a FAMElike program can be developed and launched. As the demand
for soft skills continues to grow, innovative efforts like FAME
will be increasingly important for ensuring that American industries and workers have what they need to compete in a
global economy.
Anne Kim is a contributing editor to the Washington Monthly and
the author of Abandoned: America's Lost Youth and the Crisis of
Disconnection.
Washington Monthly 43

Washington Monthly - September/October 2020

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