Maritime Careers Get Attention From School Counselors

“I was impressed by how many people wanted to get involved,” Brandon Phillips told The Waterways Journal. He was speaking about his experience at the American School Counselor Association’s annual meeting at New Orleans in July.

Philips is a compliance and personnel manager at Riverview Tug Service and a board member of We Work the Waterways. WWW executive director Errin Howard and Pam Maxwell, director of programs and operations at WWW, also attended the ASCA event. WWW’s booth was part of Mariners Row, a collection of maritime-related companies exhibiting at the conference.

The “Row” was the brainchild of Todd Wright, editor at American Maritime Officers. Phillips said the row actually was made up of three rows of booths and featured about 40 maritime-related groups. Wright said the inspiration for it came three years ago, when he attended ASCA’s annual conference in Kansas City, and none of the school counselors there had heard of the maritime sector or the opportunities it offered young people. The first Mariners Row in Long Beach, Calif., last year featured about 50 maritime-related groups, including all of the major maritime academies, commercial shippers and labor unions.

Many of the nation’s maritime academies saw upticks in enrollment last year, in part because of marketing and recruiting efforts like Mariners Row, which focuses on reintroducing maritime into the classroom.

“It was a big win that resulted in tangible interest in our industry, with increases in applications to our engineering apprenticeship, and other unions that attended the recruiting event,” Wright said. “Students can’t apply if they don’t know about all of our diverse career opportunities. We knew we had to talk to the people who talk to them.”

The federal government led the recruiting effort this year, with the U.S. Maritime Administration and U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command serving as chief financial sponsors for Mariners Row. Maritime labor unions, such as AMO and the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association, joined in the fun along with state maritime academies Cal Poly Maritime, Massachusetts Maritime Academy, SUNY Maritime College, Texas A&M Maritime Academy and the United States Merchant Marine Academy.

The list of shipping companies contained shipping giants like APL Maritime Ltd., Crowley Corporation, Liberty Maritime Corporation, Ocean Shipholdings Inc., OSG Ship Management, Schuyler Line Navigation Company, TOTE Services and US Ocean, just to name a few.
Next year, the goal is to bring in more sectors of the industry, like shipbuilding, Wright said.

Besides manning the WWW booth, Phillips was later asked to share a panel spot with the Military Sealift Command. He said two schools have already reached out to WWW to request presentations as a result of the networking at the meeting.

ASCA is the largest association of school counselors, and its annual meeting gathers about 5,000 of them together. Mariners Row got a lot of positive attention from the counselors, Phillips said. In an era when many questions are being raised about the value and cost of a college education, counselors are welcoming information about alternative pathways for students that can lead to good-paying jobs, many of which don’t require a degree.

At the same time, the push to revive shipbuilding is putting pressure on maritime companies to build career pipelines and pathways to make sure young people get the word about these career opportunities. 

Technical Educators At Workboat

Howard said WWW is set to participate in another conference in December. The Association for Career and Technical Education is having a conference in New Orleans December 2 to 5 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, La. The ACTE event will share both a venue and a timeline with the upcoming WorkBoat show, and WWW staffers will help the two events cross-fertilize each other, according to Howard. She said maritime industry professionals will lead ACTE members around the WorkBoat show to familiarize them with the career opportunities in the maritime world. ASCA counselors handle career preparation as one among many issues with which they help their students. ACTE counselors are more focused on career preparation alone. 

Featured photo caption: The Texas A&M Maritime Academy photo booth was featured at Mariners Row, where more than 40 companies showcased maritime career opportunities during the American School Counselor Association’s annual conference. (Photo courtesy of ASCA)