A is for apprenticeship

Heather Davis hasn’t always worked in turf maintenance. Instead, she started a career in cosmetology and worked as a hairdresser for 20 years. She then moved to working in a preschool, which inspired her to get her bachelor’s degree in elementary education.

Teachers will often find a summer job to work and earn extra money, and that’s how Davis, 47, ended up working at North Carolina’s Knollwood Fairways and Midland Country Club. Her superintendent noticed her curiosity and attention to detail, and suggested she look at apprenticeship programs.

“I kept asking him, ‘What is this machine? And I want to drive that tractor, and I want to do this. What are you spraying? Can I come with you? And what’s with this grass? And why is this grass like this?’ Davis says. “He didn’t have enough answers.”

Not wanting to return to school for another four years, a turf maintenance apprenticeship program was a good fit for Davis. She can continue her education without draining her bank account or surrendering all her time.

Apprenticeships represent a growing trend in recruiting and maintaining staff for the golf industry, which remains an ongoing challenge. Programs are structured offerings that are typically shorter than a college degree program, and they focus on a specific trade or career. For programs like the USGA Greenkeeper Apprenticeship Program and The New York State Turfgrass Association’s Registered Apprenticeship Program, a focus is placed on turfgrass and golf course management.

A typical apprenticeship program for turf management can range from one to two years. North Carolina’s Sandhills Community College program, in partnership with the USGA, begins in January and ends in December. Course work consists of in-classroom units, hands-on work in the lab or on a course, and a checklist of tasks that need to be completed to earn a certification as a golf course technician. The program offers pathways to earn a level one and level two technician certification.

One difference between an apprenticeship program and a typical four-year degree is the level of information taught. For programs at Sandhills, the units covered are snapshots of what would be taught in a university.

“When we cover soils, they would take that as a full class at the university, but with us, it’s just one month, and we’re not doing the deep dive, but we are doing the introduction and it gives them the working knowledge to at least ask better questions on the course, go and do their own research to supplement it,” says Carson Letot, USGA Greenkeeper Apprenticeship Program coordinator. “So, it’s kind of like a little appetizer.”

Apprenticeships can be a route taken by students at any life point. A college degree is not required for enrollment, and there is no age maximum.

For Sandhills Community College’s program, most students are in their late 20s, but Letot says the standard deviation is massive.

“I have some students that are in their early 20s,” Letot says. “I have some that are in their late 50s. So, it’s really a big swath. But I definitely have a few that are parents. I even had one last year that was a grandparent.”

Apprenticeships can be an ideal route for those who have already attended college or for those who can’t afford it. The programs provide an opportunity for increased education for people on any route in life.

“For our students, the apprenticeship makes a lot of sense, because they’re not coming into it with a tremendous amount of fiscal resources,” Letot says. “A lot of them have families already, so they don’t have a ton of time to go take a bunch of classes or pick up their families and move to one of the college towns, and they ultimately want a spark to move up in their career.”

Locksley Blanchard finished the apprenticeship at Sandhills last year. He didn’t start his career working in the turf maintenance industry, though. Blanchard, 43, had previously studied theater and history in college, and worked in the food and beverage industry and as a hotel manager in New York before moving back to North Carolina.

While looking for a part-time job, he landed a job as a greenskeeper at North Carolina’s Pinehurst Resort. It was there that he fell in love with the job and wanted to learn as much as he could.

“I enjoyed being outside, being able to be on my feet, and to be able to see your finished product every day is very fulfilling,” Blanchard says. “I really embraced it. And as a student of knowledge, I had heard about the GAP program, and had been recommended by my superintendent to take part in it, and the rest is history.”

The golf industry has been a male-dominated industry from the beginning. These programs are playing a role in getting more females into the mix. Davis, a student in this year’s cohort, will be Letot’s first female student in the program.

“My job is to keep my ears open and my eyes open, to keep looking for ways that I can work with those individuals,” Letot says. “We need to recruit people into the industry, but we also need to retain them. And I think we’ve not done a poor job. It’s just things are changing and we have a different generation that’s coming in, and they’re most certainly great people, but they’re just different and we have to evolve and change with them. We can’t be stubborn.

“I think this apprenticeship model is going to be popular because it caters to those individuals who want to be making money, they want to have hands-on training, and they want to have immediate results. But I think it’s going to only be one of the 45 different things we need to do. I think we do a good job at diversifying our cohorts, and we definitely see much more diverse cohorts, socioeconomically and racially and ethnically, but at the same time, we could be doing even better, right?”

Davis now works as a greenskeeper at Pinehurst. The program helped her understand the work she is doing, and how she can do better.

“Now I know what we’re doing and why,” she says. “So, I could do this job efficiently if I didn’t have this training, but I can do it a whole lot better to come up with solutions instead of following the manager because of this training.

“It’s definitely worth the time to learn and to put towards learning your job. I think if you don’t consider yourself studious or not a reader — you’re more active — apprenticeship programs are the way to go. Not everyone can sit in a classroom, and there’s time for that. There really is. There has to be. But I really struggle sitting down, and never did good sitting in a classroom, so this apprenticeship program has been a great thing for me.”

The New York State Turfgrass Association accepted its first official cohort of students in September. As president of the NYSTA, Thomas Kaplun has seen the industry struggle to hold employees and believes apprenticeships provide an education opportunity for many.

“You have the students that might not be able to afford formal education. You might have the workers that have the experience but might not be able to afford going to school full-time or have the resources to be able to do so,” says Kaplun, the superintendent at North Hempstead Country Club on Long Island. “And then you also have the people who have graduated from college with four-year degrees.”

The programs are built to provide students with the knowledge and resources to return to their maintenance jobs or to find a new job.

“I think that what the apprenticeships have allowed is a formal pathway for laborers you might have on staff, qualified staff that take a liking and an interest and show a drive for this line of work, to be able to go get some sort of education, some sort of formalized certificate that allows for them to have the experience and the education to become assistants,” Kaplun adds.

The NYSTA program includes 4,000 hours of on-the-job training over two years. Apprentices can earn up to 19 college credit hours through SUNI-Delhi, the program’s partner university, which can be applied to an associate’s degree if the student desires.

Tyler Bloom took an interest in apprenticeship programs after his own difficulty holding onto staff. As a previous superintendent at Maryland’s Sparrows Point Country Club, Bloom struggled to find and retain key skilled-typed positions such as assistant superintendents and spray techs.

“I had a guidance counselor talk to me at the time about youth apprenticeship, which is huge in Maryland, and I just found it to be such a rewarding thing, very similar to when I was an intern, getting mentored and developed,” Bloom says. “I found that to be just such a rewarding thing. And to take career job seekers and help them find their passion in this industry, I just really took to that.”

Bloom assisted in creating a registered apprenticeship program at Sparrows Point, and now owns Tyler Bloom Consulting. As Bloom helps the NYSTA prepare for its first cohort, he is looking forward to supporting students and seeing his team’s hard work pay off.

“They’ve got the employers that are supporting them on the job, academia, faculty that are going to support them and their growth and fuel their passion,” Bloom says. “And then I think they have industry support, through someone like myself, the New York State Turfgrass Association. So, I think we’re on the cusp of something pretty special in a really golf-focused state.”

Although the apprenticeship programs are not an immediate solution to the industry’s labor problems, many agree they are a big step in the right direction.

“Is this the end-all, be-all solution?” Bloom asks. “Probably not for every facility. But I think every facility should be instituting some level of on-the-job training for sure.”

Kelsie Horner is Golf Course Industry’s assistant editor.