Inside IALR

Workforce Programs, Technology Development and More with Jason Wells

• Institute for Advanced Learning and Research

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0:00 | 27:18

Jason Wells, who recently joined IALR as the Executive Vice President of Manufacturing Advancement, joins the show to outline the division's impact and how he plans to contribute to its success. Wells highlights 

  • His career experiences (1:06)
  • What led him to take this new role with IALR (4:42)
  • Some of the different programs and focus areas of the Manufacturing Advancement division (7:00)
  • A three-pronged partnership with the U.S. Navy (13:00)
  • His vision for the division (19:45) 


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Caleb Ayers:

Welcome to another episode of Inside IALR. Thanks for joining us. We've had a lot of growth at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research in the last uh really two years, two two years and change. Um and a big portion of that growth has been happening in our manufacturing advancement division, which uh is our our newest division, was launched in about 2018 and and since then has just um grown ex exponentially. Um and we're here today with Jason Wells, who has stepped into the role of executive vice president of that entire division, and he has been here for what is it, a little little over a month now, Jason?

Jason Wells:

Yeah, approximately six weeks.

Caleb Ayers:

Nice. So yeah, that's we we got you fresh on the job. You're still excited, still, still having fun. So uh thanks thanks for being here today.

Jason Wells:

It's my pleasure. Thanks for taking the time to talk with me.

Caleb Ayers:

You know, you're you're new to the role. I know you're not new to the institute and what what the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research, what we do. So tell us a little bit about your your background and your experience leading up to joining IALR.

Jason Wells:

Sure. Um going way, way back. Um my my path started very much like many of the uh students that uh come to the institute for various workforce development uh education efforts. Um my background, I started out in this career path as a journeyman tool maker, uh served a four-year apprenticeship and and kind of went the uh non-traditional route in regards to uh education. So I I came in, you know, started in the uh manufacturing arena uh skilled as a skilled labor person, and I'm very, very proud of that background. And then uh once I got into the workforce, started to develop my education skill set beyond that to uh to continue to grow and to continue to um take on other endeavors within in the manufacturing arena. Uh total I have about 34th, almost 35 years of of manufacturing experience. Pretty much have done that since the late 80s, uh early 90s coming out of high school, and then worked through a variety of different capacities within a manufacturing environment, um, all the way uh, like I said, from the shop level of of uh operating manufacturing equipment uh through shop management to uh full operations management to research and development, product development, uh touched a little bit of everything. I was very fortunate in my career in the sense that when I came into the industry, I went to work for a privately owned entity, um a family-owned company that went through a tremendous growth spurt uh into the late 90s and early 2000s, and due to the demands of rapid growth, uh got to experience a a little bit of every aspect of the operations and touch those various operations, which have been incredibly beneficial for me um throughout my career, you know, to pull upon that those uh real world experiences and those skill sets of walking a mile in a variety of different shoes that all are necessary in order for a manufacturing entity to to grow and to thrive.

Caleb Ayers:

Right. No, and that's that sounds like you know, those experiences also would help in this role, and you're managing a lot of diverse programs and services and and um operations that are it's important that you understand that from the ground up. You know, you understand, as you said, what what's happening at the operations level and then can see that from the bigger picture and pulling from all those experiences too.

Jason Wells:

Definitely. Um and I and I hope that that's something that I can bring uh to the table. I had some great mentors uh throughout my career path. I would never have been able to accomplish the things I had not uh that I have in my career without the inspiration, the guidance, uh the folks that had uh very much taken time to um to really share their knowledge and share their experiences with me. When I saw the opportunity to come over to the institute and be a part of what's going on here, uh a real motivating factor was to pay it forward. I look to hopefully instill my experience, um, my experiences throughout the years in in the variety of capacities that I've served in, um, but also to really uh help that next generation.

Caleb Ayers:

Mm-hmm. So tell us a little bit about your your experience with IALR before joining our organization.

Jason Wells:

Yeah, that's uh that's an interesting story. So it goes back almost nine years now. Um so I was working for a company that was searching to uh locate an advanced um engineering hub. And uh it it was specifically in the cutting tools or cutting tool arena, but uh what we were looking to do was do tailored products, blueprint type products, and turnkey projects uh fully engineered from the ground up. And um after we got to searching, we we landed in Danville here uh very much because we were inspired but what by what we saw going on here at the Institute. That that really motivated us to have a high level of confidence to bring our uh organization here to town. So I think what's unique that I hopefully can also bring to this role is uh for the last eight plus years, I was a recipient of the benefits of the Institute. As a hiring manager, I hired uh pretty extensively out of the various programs on the ILR campus. Um as a business leader in the community. I served on a variety of boards and and got the uh ability to advise and to meet other industry members, and the community did a great job of bringing us together as industry. Um so I I I've really seen that side of it as someone who would come into town uh with the responsibility of growing, managing, starting up a company. And those experiences um really inspired me.

Caleb Ayers:

Yeah, no, that's that's really cool. And I know mostly you're talking about the integrated machining technology program that you've got.

Jason Wells:

It was, yeah, that was the foundational program that we've that was here on campus when we first came. It you know, it's coming into its tenth year or its tenth cohort, and uh, you know, so you know, eight years ago when we came, it was a fairly new program itself, but uh in that eight years, um we've just seen a continued commitment and evolution and you know uh just the campus expand, uh the capabilities expand.

Caleb Ayers:

As you said, you know, during that time s since since you came around with you know working primarily with the IMT program, we have a lot a lot more going on now than we did then. So let's kind of talk through some some of what the Manufacturing Advancement Division covers. Generally, um you could kind of categorize it as there's a lot of workforce training programs. I would say that that's probably the bulk of it, and then a lot of technology development. And then also we're we're providing some specialty services to industry. Would you think that would be sort of a fair way to encapsulate what yeah, very much so.

Jason Wells:

Um that that's actually a great way of of describing it. Um the the manufacturing advancement uh division within the ILR is definitely the fastest growing division. Um it's it's also now the largest. I think what has really happened is, you know, I talked about how I as an industrialist that came to town was inspired by that third-year program. Um since then, there's been some tremendous other programs that continue to just make those critical junctures uh and connection points in what I call that workforce pipeline. Uh one program in particular that I served on the board for uh when I was running a company here in town that I'm always incredibly impressed with is the GoTech program. Um, you know, that's pushing that that awareness of skilled labor and engineering paths down to that middle school level. You come to town and you see, okay, you're starting this pipeline at that sixth grade level, and then you carry that on into these very well-equipped uh programs at the high school level. You know, with the uh dual enrollment programs at the high school level, you can then get some of your community college credits taken care of. And so now you've got that that carries over to the DCC campus, you know, to get your associate's degree. And then the institute started it with in conjunction with DCC, the third year integrated machining program that now takes that you know associate's degree person and and steps them up just a level uh a next level to you know really refine those soft skills, get a feel for the dynamics that goes on and bringing a manufacturing environment together and really training those next level manufacturing leaders, team leaders, and and supervisors. And now with collaboration with uh Old Dominion University, we now have a path to go to a four-year degree as well. I say all that to say that you know, a lot of the growth that's happened here in the Institute is the collaborative efforts and cooperations of, as I just mentioned, many, many different governing bodies and institutions and folks all coming together, rowing the boat in the same direction with a common vision of you know, world-class skilled labor coming out of this community. And what that now that others outside the community have come and observed that, you know, what was created, what was built, um, they have been inspired to tap into that magic, tap into that secret sauce to a degree, and now we're seeing programs that are being pushed out, like the ATDM program, the accelerated training program for defense manufacturing. Um now we're seeing the national level recognize the the success that Danville has had. That's the training component of it, but how we've trained advanced technologies, how we've trained modern techniques has inspired um another leg to the manufacturing advancement uh department, which is the research side of things, the what we call the Center for Manufacturing Advancement, where we're doing uh real-world projects to optimize, to to really bring technologies to industry as a whole. So um so really it's a it's all exciting and uh and you know, and it has a lot to do with um not just the institute but the whole community.

Caleb Ayers:

And and what you're talking about, sort of of those, you know, the the initial investments and groundworks from IELR and uh so many other partners laying the foundation for things like GoTech, which now is spreading all over the state, um, and and creating that pipeline through those schools as that sort of being a big part of the inspiration for the Navy wanting to invest here is is a really cool, cool story to see that you know, there's not even when when those pipelines were being put together, I'm sure no one was thinking this is gonna lead to us having a major Navy training program also come here.

Jason Wells:

Yeah, I would say, you know, that that that's what's interesting is that wasn't the objective. Um it's certainly a a great byproduct. Um, you know, I think to a degree, Danville did a very brave thing with uh with the institute and with the investments you said with various pieces of equipment, you know, and took a kind of a build it and they will come type of philosophy. It's one of the things that I loved about the community and the institute is they really understand and they're really uh dedicated to their why. Um why they're doing, you know, this for the the region's economic transformation for the n the jet the the future generations that are growing up, you know, in the region. And then um, you know, I I think a lot of places focus on the what and the how, you know, they they know what they want, you know, they they're very clear on what they want to do, they define processes on how they do it, but you can sometimes lose sight of your why. And the why that that inspiration is really um what what's driving, you know, the the confidence in in in what we're capable of doing. Mm-hmm.

Caleb Ayers:

Yeah, I know. And this organization is very, very clear on on what our mission is and make sure that's from the top to the bottom that everyone understands what that mission is and how how what they do contributes to that. I want to talk a little bit in depth about we have three separate, sort of separate um partnerships with the Navy. One of those, as you you mentioned, and we you can kind of give a brief overview of each of these, is the Accelerated Training and Defense Manufacturing Program, basically training training workers to essentially build submarines or work on work with companies that make parts for submarines and ships inside our Center for Manufacturing Advancement. Um the Navy has established their additive manufacturing center of excellence. You can talk about that and sort of what that work is. Four months ago, we we launched the uh Naval Aviation School for Additive Manufacturing, which is training active duty Navy sailors and marines. Um so kind of talk us through each of those programs and what that means for us that we have such so many different partnerships going with with the U.S. Navy here in here at Danville.

Jason Wells:

Certainly it's interesting to see how you know the this small community of Danville um is having such a huge impact on our on our nation as a whole. I'll start with the ATDM program, the accelerated training program. So one of the things that has been identified by you know the U.S. government, the skill what we call skills gap um that exists in industry and that you know uh is truly a a risk to national security. Um Admiral Papano, who was a big uh proponent of the efforts that are happening here in Danville, I remember sitting through one of the summits that we hosted here in Danville and him giving a a very moving and powerful uh speech about you know how critical our manufacturing bandwidth and capabilities have been to our uh, you know, our ability to avoid conflict and and also to win conflict. So going clear back to World War II, you know, turning bread factories into bullet factories and car factories into tank factories, and then you fast forward in time and offshoring of our manufacturing capabilities and the move away from skilled labor certainly puts us at risk of being able to do that if we ever needed to do that again. Um those are that's a shift to get back to you know a robust workforce um that that's filling the defense industrial base, the submarine industrial base. The gap is huge, you know, it's it's estimated at you know a leakage of 10,000 um workers uh needed per year. So the ATDM program was created to take basically a year's worth of community college training and smash it into 16 weeks. Um we accomplish that through a very rigorous schedule of uh training five days a week, eight hours a day, just like you would on a job or you know, uh in a work environment, and we do that 24 hours a day, so we do three shifts of training. Um, and we train in five primary tracks that really fill the industrial base. That's uh C and C machining, welding, fabricating, quality assurance, or metrology um additive, which uh is a pretty exciting uh new addition to the industrial community, and NDT, which is an inspection process kind of associated with additive. Our goal is 800 to 1,000 a year when the facilities are completely up and and fully functional.

Caleb Ayers:

Which our our the National Training Center is set to open in in early 2025.

Jason Wells:

Yes, yeah. The other thing we have is the additive manufacturing center of excellence that we uh lead uh that we're a part of here in the um Center for Manufacturing Advancement. And really what that that uh program entails, um, I think after you know Navy came on campus, saw some of our capabilities and and some of the space that we were creating, some of the uh, you know, um things that we were engaged in, uh they had confidence in putting this project on campus. And what that project really is looking at is taking um, I'll take, I'll say, uh conventional components that were cast or forged in the past and looking to modernize the entire uh process around some of those components that you'd find on a submarine or a ship. Um they're looking to take it from a casting or forged type of environment into an additive grown uh component. Um so what that really does is that gives the industrial base an opportunity to drastically reduce um the time from a need to a delivered component. Um and obviously when you're transitioning from traditional processes into more modern techniques, there has to be an adequate proving process and transitional process. And we're uh um ourselves as well as uh two partners, Phillips and Austel, are engaged in that project to help uh the Navy transition those older technologies into more modern techniques. The uh last program, the NAVAir program, it's active duty military. Um it's an abbreviated program that focuses on the additive component. It's a customized curriculum that uh meets their specific needs in the military itself.

Caleb Ayers:

Right. Yeah, no, that's really cool. And I know we just I think just in the past few weeks, the third third group from that, the same is what we call it, that that group graduated.

Jason Wells:

Exactly.

Caleb Ayers:

Um yeah, that's really cool. Thanks for for outlining all that, just all those different all the different ways that we're helping the Navy, and a lot of that does center around additive manufacturing, which I'm sure I'm gonna get into that with with Tim and James in a in a future episode.

Jason Wells:

Good. It's fascinating, it really is.

Caleb Ayers:

But I think that's just really cool, all the different ways we're hitting that, both in terms of the technology development side and almost making those those um, as you said, the proving process and making those recipes so that there are, you know, those other suppliers can make those parts well and have have the exact formula to do that.

Jason Wells:

What's uh what's an interesting connection there too, and I think an advantage for uh for us here at the Institute is you know, we're working on emerging technologies here in the Center for Manufacturing Advancement. The great thing is we can take lessons learned in that aspect of it and then build it into curriculum. We are working on a lot of that leading edge um aspects on the research side um and then you know being able to apply that to the to the education side um gives us that real-time impact.

Caleb Ayers:

I think it's it's really cool all all of the different you know programs and work that the the manufacturing advancement division is doing right now. So for you, I mean I know you're six weeks in, so still, still getting the lay of the land, but I mean what's what's kind of your what's your vision? What are you hoping to accomplish as the leader of this division? What are what are you expecting to see grow, to see change? I mean, what's what's kind of your what do you see coming?

Jason Wells:

Well, um in all honesty, um being this new in the role, um I'm certainly still trying to learn, you know, to get to know my staff, certainly our partnerships and our relationships, uh getting to understand the dynamics of those and um how we can be uh make sure that our relationships are mutually beneficial and you know, and that we're being an active contributor. But to kind of answer your question, I think I'm so grateful and thrilled uh to be a part of what's going on here. And like I said, as as someone who's watched it as uh as an industrial member here in the community, um served on various boards, and I know that the recipe's there. Um I don't need to mess with the recipe too much or come in and reinvent anything because everything's moving in the right direction. Um the staff that here is incredibly talented, uh credibly driven, incredibly inspiring, and you know, and and I want to be a part of that, not uh not to disrupt it, but uh how can I accelerate that? How can I um support that best and you know help remove obstacles and barriers that may slow our progress or get in the way or impede the progress. Um but really truly um I think that's a big, you know, for me is making sure that we um don't grow i uh in a way that that um becomes debilitating. And what I mean by that is, you know, just to really make sure that uh I uh I can be a part of of making sure that the the growth is impactful and that it that it's able to continue. And um with that also making sure that we stay true to our why, you know, and that we stay relevant. Um to be more specific, you know, we want to certainly grow our um partnerships here at the CMA with research. Um we want to get more uh engaged with industry members and how we can help take technologies, current relevant technologies, and implement them in real time immediately and make impacts for their operations. Uh we want to continue to look at the uh education side of things and how can we get creative with additional programs, additional tracks that we could possibly bring into the fold. And then of course everything always boils down to the individual. Um I I truly I I I mean this very sincerely. I care about every person on our team and I'm a firm believer that if you align a person with their passion, you know, it's just kind of a let them go, you know, and let 'em let them get get after it and succeed. You know, the success of each individual on this team manifests into everything that you see on this campus and and that's that's a real big focus for me.

Caleb Ayers:

Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, and I think what you're talking about is cool that you're you know, you're not coming in four years ago when basically having to build everything from the ground up. You're coming in when it's all already growing and you get to help manage that and make sure that's happening the right way. That's a that's a cool, a cool position to be in.

Jason Wells:

It is, it is. And you know uh um folks like uh Tim and James and Troy and you know, all the folks that that laid you know a lot of the foundation and groundwork prior to me. I'm certainly reaping the benefits of in this in this role with great uh great programs comes great responsibilities to quote Spider-Man, I guess.

Caleb Ayers:

I like it. I like it. Um Jason, that's that's all the questions that I have. I mean I think you know it's it's it's cool to see the the as we've talked about the the growth of this division and the impact of this division that's you know really having a an impact on you know students locally who are coming through you know things like the IMT program. It's you know we're bringing teachers in for teacher training, we're um but then what you know with ATDM we're bringing people from almost 40 plus states and sending them back out to 40 plus states and having that level of national impact. So it's cool to see that you know local, regional, national impact all all packed into one um division. But but that's all the questions that I have. I mean, is there anything else that that you would want to add or no?

Jason Wells:

I I mean I I appreciate the time um and I hope, you know, as as I get deeper into this role to you know be invited back for future episodes on what's what's new and what's going on, because I I have no doubt we'll have plenty to talk about uh moving forward. The the mission here uh at the institute is regional to be a catalyst for economic transformation in the region. And it's you know, it's a it's almost like we're a force multiplier of of inspiration and passion into the into the industry that we're industries that we're connected to. And the last thing I will say is uh if anybody's listening to this to that may want to consider, you know, you know, is are there is there a path for me at you know within some of the tracks that we offer in the manufacturing advancement. Um the the industrial community is an awesome community. Um it's it's such a difference maker in any economy. You can uh we can't have just a service-based economy. You have to make things and sell things and create things. And uh I've always taken a great deal of pride um in and I hope that the students that come out of here realize that what they're doing, the contributions they're making to the to the world both make a difference, both figuratively and literally, and they shape the world we all live in. We're all, you know, just a a degree separated from a machining process or an additive process or a quality process. And you know, so um so it's it's amazing what we do and and I'm super proud to be a part of it.

Caleb Ayers:

Yeah, no, and absolutely, and definitely we'll we'll be having you back on at some point. Yeah, hope like you said, hopefully for for something cool and new to talk about. So thanks for being here. We appreciate it.

Jason Wells:

Thank you.