Nicole McCarty (left) and Nathan Huenemann are longtime Navajo Generating Station employees being retrained to be IT business analysts for SRP. Courtesy photo.
PAGE — Nicole McCarty began working at the Navajo Generating Station 15 years ago. Until recently, she was the Control Room Operations Specialist for the coal-fired power plant.
“I went into the job when I was 18,” McCarty said, adding that she had a 2-year-old daughter at the time.
Now, her daughter is 18 and the plant is slated for closure by the end of the year, but McCarty will continue to work for Salt River Project thanks to an innovative retraining apprenticeship program, called Apprenti, which is being taught in Page at Coconino Community College by instructors from both CCC and Northern Arizona University.
SRP partnered with Apprenti, a 501c3 operated by the Washington Technology Industry Association, to reskill NGS employees for mid-level IT Business Analyst positions. Apprenti is a registered apprenticeship program for careers in technology. The Apprenti model is meant to “provide a proven, reliable pipeline for underrepresented groups such as minorities, women and veterans to gain training, certification and placement within the talent-hungry tech industry,” according to information from Apprenti.
McCarty is one of 10 NGS employees being retrained to be an Information Technology Business Analyst for SRP. According to SRP, 221 of the NGS salaried employees have been reassigned to other SRP facilities, with another 115 awaiting offers for new placements. The goal is to train the apprentices to identify tech challenges in business, find solutions to those challenges and implement solutions. All 10 NGS employees participating in the Apprenti program at CCC will continue on the SRP payroll while they undergo three months of intense classroom instruction, and another year of on-the-job training at an SRP facility in the Valley. After successfully completing the apprenticeship requirements, each apprentice will become Journeyworker level IT Business Analysts and start their new tech career with SRP.
McCarty said the process to be accepted into the apprenticeship program began with testing, which centered primarily on math, social skills and critical thinking. After passing the testing phase, she and the other candidates applied to the program, submitted resumes, letters of support, and were interviewed.
Kay Leum, Executive Director of Extended Learning at CCC, said that the pilot Apprenti program for Arizona involves many partners, including SRP, WTIA, and the Northern Arizona College Connection, a consortium of four Arizona institutions consolidating education efforts in far northern Arizona. For the Apprenti program, instructors from CCC and Northern Arizona University are leading the classes at CCC in Page.
Until mid-July, the apprentices are being inundated five days a week, all day long with information in: Computer Information Systems, Business Writing, Project Management, Business Analysis, Public Speaking and Computer Databases, Leum said. In total, the apprentices will be earning 18 hours of college credit before they head off to their on-the-job training.
Nathan Huenemann started with NGS 10 years ago. His last assignment was Operations and Maintenance, Level III. He’s also in the apprentice program.
“I held out hope as long as anyone could have,” Huenemann said of the plant’s fate, until it became a reality. “It was a definite feeling of loss.”
He said he is grateful to SRP for making it possible for him to get an opportunity to head into another career without a college degree. Of course, he is doing his part to get into the program and succeed.
“We don’t take it for granted,” Huenemann said, adding that all of the students are currently earning A’s in their coursework. “We’ve all been so fortunate. Whatever happens, I think we’ll be able to handle what gets thrown at us.”
McCarty said, “I’ve always been super curious about computers and how they work and why they do what they do.”
She’s also getting computer programming experience, which fascinates her.
“It’s fun,” McCarty said. “I’m loving everything that we’re learning.”
For more information about Apprenti, visit apprenticareers.org. For more information about SRP, visit srpnet.com. For more information about CCC, visit coconino.edu.