Alex Mazanowski will be the first to tell you he’s more of a lunch-bucket guy than a backpack guy. Carrying books around a college campus wasn’t for him; after a year at a state school, he realized his “heart was just never in it.”

That’s not the case today.

A decade into his career as a journeyman lineworker, Mazanowski has never looked back on his decision to grab some trade-skills training and join the workforce. He started as a sheet metal worker in the volatile aerospace industry but longed to be outdoors in a stable job he could find anywhere in the country. A high school friend suggested lineworker school.

“He highly recommended it, and so when more layoffs were coming, I just decided to leave on my own terms,” Mazanowski remembers.

Later that year, with 10 weeks of lineworker pre-apprentice training behind him, he took a part-time summer job at Somerset Rural Electric Cooperative (REC); a full-time job offer followed in the fall. He’s been with the co-op ever since, nearing his 11-year anniversary.

“I’m a huge fan of trade schools,” Mazanowski says. “Trades are everywhere … there have to be electricians, there have to be plumbers … and there have to be lineworkers out working in a storm.”

Industry has known it all along.

“Everyone is telling us there is a need, that they don’t have enough people to fill the current jobs,” says Jody McCarty, the workforce program administrator with the Northern Tier Regional Planning and Development Commission (NTRPDC), which covers five counties, a region also served by Claverack REC, Tri-County REC and Sullivan County REC.

Rob Bair, president of the Pennsylvania State Building & Construction Trades Council, agrees: “The bedrock of our industry, and the strength of our future, lies in the hands of the next generation of skilled workers. With a retiring workforce and increased demand, investing in the training and development of young talent isn’t just an option — it’s imperative for the continued growth and innovation of the building and construction trades and many others.”

McCarty says introducing students to their options at an early age is critical to filling these hands-on professions. That’s why she and Renae Chamberlain, the commission’s business education program manager, put together the Manufacturing and Trades Career Camp.

“We want to give the students an idea of the careers that are available,” says Chamberlain of the three-day summer camp. Mornings introduce sixth through ninth graders to the trades, and afternoons offer on-site tours and demonstrations at various employers, including Claverack REC in Wysox, Bradford County. 

“We want to catch these students before they’ve made their career plans,” she adds. “We provide them with information on programs available through our career and technical center here in Bradford County as well as the Apprenticeship Training Office.” 
 

Filling a need

Businesses are also taking an active role in crafting curriculums at local career and technical education schools. REA Energy is among them.

Nick Hartman, the co-op’s manager of engineering, sits on the advisory committee for the River Valley STEAM Academy, a workforce development initiative of the River Valley School District in Indiana and Westmoreland counties. He says he knows what he needs from young graduates.

“We’re really looking for someone who can — and knows — how to learn,” Hartman says. “The field of staking engineers [those who physically design the power grid we all live on], for example, isn’t something that’s taught, but if you have someone with a solid understanding of electricity and how things are constructed, we can teach them on the job.”

At River Valley, Hartman has helped to build the curriculum for the Electrical Occupations and Powerline Program, which provides basic skills and works with post-secondary partners, including Penn College and the cooperative, to prepare students for work in the electrical, construction and powerline industries. 

Enrollments at Pennsylvania’s tech schools are climbing. The 2022-2023 academic year had 1,415 approved programs at 88 career and tech centers around the state, with an enrollment of 59,838 — a 4.6% increase from 2021-2022. As numbers continue to grow, the state continues to increase program funding. It’s provided $65 million in the past two years and included another $5.5 million in Gov. Josh Shapiro’s 2025-2026 budget proposal.

Sam Schuss, a career counselor at the Bedford County Technical Center (BCTC) and a Bedford Rural Electric Cooperative member, can also attest to the growth.

“While our population of students, as a whole, is dropping, our enrollment percentages [at BCTC] are up,” he says. “Technology education is taking off nationwide because we have the need. The people who do those jobs … plumbers, electricians, masons … are trying to retire. That’s one of the reasons we’re looking at expanding our programs.”
 

'I knew where I wanted to be'

Layne McCormick, whose family gets service from Sullivan County REC, says hands-on experience early on — a key part of most career and tech school curriculums — is crucial to helping students understand exactly what they’re signing up for.

“It teaches you a lot about yourself because the first month will be the hardest,” McCormick says, remembering his summer at Georgia’s Southeast Lineman Training Center, an education he was able to pursue thanks to a scholarship from the cooperative. “There were a lot of kids who quit that first month.”

But McCormick was already locked in. He not only found a mentor at Sullivan County REC but also job-shadowed at the co-op during his senior year at Hughesville High School to learn as much as possible about line work.

“You can’t lose track of your goal. Trade school is a big investment, and it’s easy to get comfortable with stepping stones,” he says, explaining he could have taken a job trimming trees or installing communications lines rather than pursuing line work. “But I knew where I wanted to be in the end and that was working for a power company.”

For those like McCormick who dream of climbing utility poles, lineworker’s school is usually the first step.

“We call it a lineman’s boot camp,” says 50-year veteran Ken Bilek, founder and director of training at Global Powerline Academy in Blair County, which has a 92% graduation rate for its 10-week school. “The general rule of thumb is that it takes 10 years before you are fully capable of handling what you’re going to see out there; it’s that diversified. We’re giving them the fundamentals.”

In the past dozen years, 500 students have completed the pre-apprentice program, including Somerset REC’s Alex Mazanowski. And now, past the 10-year mark himself, Mazanowski has his own apprentice — and a lifetime career, something he’s always wanted.

 “[Trade] jobs,” he says proudly, “aren’t going anywhere."

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