Maintaining a competitive edge is critical to the success of every enterprise. Understanding and addressing all material issues of your products and services helps to give industry this edge. In particular, having leaders who have built a network of contacts to provide material services outside your core technologies leverages your resources.

ASM Hartford is initiating a program to help current and future leaders broaden their knowledge of materials and material process and to widen their network of technical contacts. Beginning this fall, we are introducing the ASM Apprenticeship/Mentor Program. 

We are introducing this program first to Chapter Sustaining Members of ASM Hartford for two reasons.

First, we are looking for companies willing to invite our apprentices for a tour of their facilities. The tour is to emphasis material issues critical to your company or material services provided by your company. The tour is to be followed by an open forum at which specific issues can be discussed. Smaller companies, without a large facility, that provide only services or equipment are encouraged to conduct a workshop on the capabilities and benefits of those services and equipment. Generally, a tour and forum or a workshop would be about two hours long. We want to have 4-6 tours/workshops each year.

Second, we are offering each Chapter Sustaining company the opportunity to be first to identify a young professional to be an ASM Apprentice and to designate someone to serve as mentor. The attached file gives the various levels of recognition available for participating in the ASM Apprenticeship/Mentor Program.

We see this as a win-win-win proposition for all participants. Your company has the opportunity to expand its technical resources and customer base. Your young professionals have a vehicle through which to increase their material awareness and contacts (See What every company executive should know about the value of technical societies). ASM Hartford will build future leaders that have hands on knowledge of the Chapter and its members and their companies.

Please let me or Jack Piela (mem@asm-hartford.org), our Chapter Director of Membership, know how you will participate in this program. Let us know if there are any constraints on the number of participants or their nationality (our program is open to the members of the UCONN Student Chapter, many of which are from other countries) in your proposed tour/workshop.

Steps to Implementing Program

Identifying 4-6 tours or workshops, and some apprentices and mentors, is the first step in starting the program. With sites identified we will start promoting the program to our general membership.

Our initial goal is to kick off the program by identifying one mentor and one apprentice from each company that is willing to participate. We want to start with pairs as we need to gain experience and establish a system to recruit mentors. Also, having pairs in the same company or facility, may be more conducive for regular apprentice/mentor meetings. It is conceivable that some volunteers will consent to mentor more than one apprentice or they may volunteer without having identified an apprentice. Those could be matched with "unaffiliated " young professionals, such as students. 

The duties of a mentor is to challenge and guide an apprentice to get the most out of a tour, work shop or ASM meeting by meeting with the apprentice before and after the event. They are to help to set expectations with a little research into what they are attending and review what was learned or observed at that event. In the ASM Apprenticeship Program, participants will be building relationship through the contacts made. Certainly, building a relationship with a mentor or an apprentice is one of the benefits.

Our social networking hour prior to our technical meetings is prime time to match unaffiliated apprentices with potential mentors. We can "seed" the program by announcing that finding mentors is a theme of the hour and perhaps by appointing some "matchmakers" to introduce people to each other for this end. Would you volunteer as a "matchmaker?" This is just one goal of our networking time. You will see that our "report form" requires apprentices to network with 3-4 other participants at the tour, workshop or meeting. 

Making a difference for the future of materials,
Arnie Grot

ASM Hartford
The first stop information source for the materials industry in northern Connecticut.