Hands-On Opportunities: Worlds of Work Fair Shows Students Career Options

Wearing rubber sleeves, safety gloves and hard hats, students received brief instructions on how to cover a power line with a thick, insulating material intended to protect line workers. They learned about equipment that isolates faulty sections of a line and then restores power when the problem is cleared. Students even used an insulated hot stick to switch a light on and off.

Wiregrass Electric Cooperative (WEC) was 1 of several utilities represented at the recent Worlds of Work career fair at the National Peanut Festival Fairgrounds in Dothan. The WEC display featured scaled-down light poles and power lines with lineworkers on hand to explain their job.

“The gloves were awkward to work with,” says Brody Hughes, a 10th grader at Houston County High School in Columbia. “It was a lot, but I’m glad it’s a lot. I’d rather it be a lot than get zapped.”

Worlds of Work (WOW) is now in its 10th year. The first WOW career fair was in 2016 with no formal organization behind it — just a group of 30 to 40 volunteers, says Katie Thomas, executive director of Southeast Alabama Works.

The organization oversees the program and hosts 2 annual events to reach as many students and employers as possible from Southeast Alabama — WOW West in Andalusia and WOW East in Dothan. There were more than 3,500 students registered to attend this year. When the WOW West event was cancelled due to January’s snowfall, those students and vendors were invited to participate in WOW East.

As the project evolved, the focus turned to introducing 10th graders to career possibilities in agriculture, automotive, aviation, construction and building science, health sciences, hospitality, manufacturing, media and information technology, public service and military, transportation and logistics, and utilities. The hope is to interest students in cooperative work-based education during their junior and senior years, Thomas says.

The original goals behind the career fair were retention and workforce development. Worlds of Work shows local students that there are opportunities in Southeast Alabama. WOW also gives exposure to local businesses, as well as jobs people may not fully understand.

“It’s not your typical career fair,” Thomas says. “This is really a hands-on, immersive experience that takes the kids on a test drive of 90 different opportunities that are right here in Southeast Alabama. So, every booth is required to have a hands-on component. They can’t just pass out trinkets or stand there and talk. They have to actually have something that a student can walk up to get their hands dirty with and try out a career in their field.”

WEC lineworker Marritt Dorriety tries to explain things in ways he feels students will understand. He asks if they have noticed the power blinking in their homes 3 times. Dorriety explains how that is a sign of the power system finding a fault on a line, such as a tree branch hitting a line, and attempting to reset itself with brief cuts to power rather than a full power outage. It’s an automatic response intended to minimize damage and keep as many members as possible with power.

While Dorriety did meet a student with plans to become a lineworker like the student’s older brothers, Dorriety says he hopes others take away a new appreciation for what lineworkers do.

“I think they have more of an idea of what goes on with all of it,” he says. “It is just a few minutes of them seeing it, but they can relate to it a little more.