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A 4th-semester apprentice in commercial painting from Coon Rapids, MN, is earning recognition for her dedication and unique perspective. Nominated for the Women Building Success conference’s 2024 Apprentice of the Year award by Jordan Bremseth of FTIUM, she’s known for more than just her painting skills—her drive to make an impact goes beyond the job site.

While working on a mural in FTIUM Recruiter Jordan Bremseth’s office, she got involved in a conversation about visiting prisons, a topic that resonated deeply with her. She was initially surprised no one had asked her to join these visits, since she has a background working in special education at a full-lockdown school. Madison has seen firsthand how disadvantaged, low-income students with cognitive and behavioral issues often end up in the system. This inspired her to start going on monthly visits to prisons, bringing the same level of care and commitment that she brought to her previous job.

Before starting in the trades, she worked as a teacher’s aide in a challenging environment, but she was drawn to pursue a new path for better pay and benefits. Even more importantly, she wanted to show her former students that stepping out of their comfort zones and taking on something difficult could lead to success. Her experience in education taught her the importance of offering opportunities, even if not everyone will take them: “You can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.”

Now, she courageously visits correctional facilities in Faribault, Shakopee, and St. Cloud with FTIUM Director of Academic Education John Burcaw. Her approach is grounded in understanding rather than judgment or fear, seeing people as individuals going through a hard time. “These people are in a time out, trying to figure it out,” she says. She doesn’t focus on what they’ve done in the past, but on how they can move forward.

For her, the goal is to give inmates the information and support they need. Whether or not they act on it is up to them. She keeps her expectations realistic, but when they’re exceeded, that’s what makes it all worthwhile.

Balancing her apprenticeship with these prison visits shows how she brings heart to everything she does—whether it’s painting walls or offering hope.

The Finishing Trades of the Upper Midwest is proud to announce that the annual Douglas M. Nelson Scholarships have officially been awarded for 2022! 

Our students are asked to apply for this scholarship by submitting a 500-word essay on their ability and intention to pursue their Associate’s of Applied Science in Construction Technologies Degree bestowed by FTIUM. 

We are so proud of all of the students who applied for this scholarship. The winners have demonstrated their commitment to their education and are building strong careers at DC 82 and FTIUM.

Congratulations to the following recipients of the Nelson Scholarship:

• Shylo Ultican
• Meghan Pillow
• Aaron Wehlage
• Jasmine Rocha
• Kailee Schminkey
• Gabriel Corbesia
• Ryan Brennan

We look forward to witnessing your personal and professional growth as you continue your education! 

Careers in the construction trades are increasing in demand, and as more well-trained workers rise to the occasion to fill those jobs, they’re breaking down old stigmas.

The resources made available at our school have proved to leave graduates just as well off, if not better, than their nonunion or traditional college graduate counterparts. You can learn more about what makes us different by taking a virtual tour of the 50,000-square foot FTIUM facility in Minnesota on the FTIUM website.

A recent study by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute (ILEPI) found that nonunion construction workers earned an average $18,300 less per year than their unionized counterparts. Based on data from the U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Census Bureau, the study also showed that nonunion workers were significantly less likely to have access to health insurance or a retirement plan at work.

“Compared with two- and four-year colleges, joint labor-management apprenticeships in construction deliver a more robust training regimen, similar diversity outcomes, competitive wages and benefit levels, and comparable tax revenue for states and local governments, while leaving graduates entirely free of burdensome student loan debt,” said ILEPI Policy Director Frank Manzo IV. While FTIUM is a 2-year college, it serves students from high school, through their apprenticeship, and into the Associate of Applied Science in Construction Technologies Degree Program.

In fact, in terms of benefits and wages, graduates of union apprenticeship programs tend to compare most similarly with workers with bachelor’s or associate’s degrees. Even more interestingly, nonunion construction workers more closely resembled other workers with high school diplomas or GEDs.

To break it down by the numbers, construction apprenticeships offer up to 41 percent more hours of training than bachelor’s programs at public universities, and a whopping 183 percent more than associate degrees at community colleges. 

This research also found that compared to public universities, joint-labor management programs enrolled a more diverse force of trainees, which has been proven to lead to higher pay. 

Producing graduates that are properly trained helps to raise the standards of safety for the overall industry, meets the increasing need for finishing trade workers, and presents a much greater group of people with the opportunity to pave their own path to the middle class, by their own means. 

Gone are the days where the only path to good-paying jobs and family-sustaining benefits was with a college degree. Visit https://ftium.edu/ to learn more.

Careers in the construction trades are increasing in demand, and as more well-trained workers rise to the occasion to fill those jobs, they’re breaking down old stigmas.

The resources made available at our school have proved to leave graduates just as well off, if not better, than their nonunion or traditional college graduate counterparts. You can learn more about what makes us different by taking a virtual tour of the 50,000-square foot FTIUM facility in Minnesota on the FTIUM website.

A recent study by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute (ILEPI) found that nonunion construction workers earned an average $18,300 less per year than their unionized counterparts. Based on data from the U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Census Bureau, the study also showed that nonunion workers were significantly less likely to have access to health insurance or a retirement plan at work.

“Compared with two- and four-year colleges, joint labor-management apprenticeships in construction deliver a more robust training regimen, similar diversity outcomes, competitive wages and benefit levels, and comparable tax revenue for states and local governments, while leaving graduates entirely free of burdensome student loan debt,” said ILEPI Policy Director Frank Manzo IV. While FTIUM is a 2-year college, it serves students from high school, through their apprenticeship, and into the Associate of Applied Science in Construction Technologies Degree Program.

In fact, in terms of benefits and wages, graduates of union apprenticeship programs tend to compare most similarly with workers with bachelor’s or associate’s degrees. Even more interestingly, nonunion construction workers more closely resembled other workers with high school diplomas or GEDs.

To break it down by the numbers, construction apprenticeships offer up to 41 percent more hours of training than bachelor’s programs at public universities, and a whopping 183 percent more than associate degrees at community colleges. 

This research also found that compared to public universities, joint-labor management programs enrolled a more diverse force of trainees, which has been proven to lead to higher pay. 

Producing graduates that are properly trained helps to raise the standards of safety for the overall industry, meets the increasing need for finishing trade workers, and presents a much greater group of people with the opportunity to pave their own path to the middle class, by their own means. 

Gone are the days where the only path to good-paying jobs and family-sustaining benefits was with a college degree. Visit https://ftium.edu/ to learn more.

The Finishing Trades Institute of the Upper Midwest (FTIUM) is continually adapting to the quickly-evolving workforce demands of our industry. Thanks to the success of our first career fair back in April which featured Congresswoman Angie Craig as our keynote speaker, FTIUM will be holding its second Virtual Career Fair on Thursday, August 12 starting at 9:30 A.M. 

Employers will host their own virtual booths where local jobseekers, students, graduates, and DC 82 members can visit with hosts and learn about each company. Employers will share any job openings they have, and visitors can chat or video chat to have any of their questions answered.

Our August Career fair will feature Rick Martagon from the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry as keynote speaker, along with a speech from John Burcaw, the Director of Academic Education at FTIUM, and more.

Registered attendees will even be able to submit virtual applications, and may have the chance to set up a follow-up interview.

This is an opportunity to explore local, trusted companies, get used to the interview process, and learn tips and tricks on how to show that you’re a great job candidate and a great worker.

Register now! If you’d like to attend, all you need to do is fill out your information. It will take 30 seconds! Don’t miss this great opportunity! 

We’re looking forward to the event, and e-see you soon! 

Click this link to sign up now! Don’t miss this great opportunity!

Announcing FTIUM’s first Virtual Career Fair
April 7, 9:30 A.M.

As vaccine rollout begins and we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel COVID-19 has created, the Finishing Trades Institute of the Upper Midwest (FTIUM) is continually adapting to socially-distanced life. In an effort to continue prioritizing the safety and comfort of its students and employers, FTIUM will be holding its first ever Virtual Career Fair on April 7th beginning at 9:30 A.M.

Multiple employers from the construction industry will host their own virtual booths and share job openings they have for interested students, DC 82 members, and other members of our community. 

Registered attendees will be able to learn more about local contractors by submitting skills transcripts, video chatting with recruiters, and setting up follow-up interviews.

Congresswoman Angie Craig will be giving a keynote speech alongside FTIUM’s Director of Academic Education, John Burcaw. 

This career fair serves as a two-fold opportunity: not only for students to apply for high-paying union jobs, but also to allow employers from across the region access to excellent, well-trained candidates.

FTIUM is proud to help its students and other community members open doors to their future careers in every way we can. This is a fantastic opportunity for students to get used to the interview process and learn tips and tricks on how to show that you’re a great job candidate, and for employers to recruit top-notch talent.

Registration is open now for employers and career seekers! All you need to do is to take 5 minutes to fill out your information. 

Student Registration

Employer Registration

Don’t miss this great opportunity!

TW: suicide, substance abuse

At Finishing Trades Institute of the Upper Midwest (FTIUM), students are offered access to various programs like Drywall Finishing, Commercial Painting, and Glazing to fit the unique career needs of each student. But it’s not only about trades training.

As part of our Helping Hands initiative, the FTIUM takes actionable steps to provide mental health illness and substance use disorder awareness and education while promoting access to Employee Assistance Program (EAP) benefits offered by TEAM through District Council 82.

Construction workers have the second-highest suicide and substance use disorder rate in any industry. In fact, data shows that construction workers are three times more likely to take their own life than the rest of the population. Understanding this gravity,  we worked with the IUPAT, Finishing First, and mental health professionals from Recovery Resources to deliver Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) to all employees of the FTIUM. This vital training best prepares first aiders to respond to students experiencing a mental health challenge or crisis.

Staff are trained on recognizing mental health warning signs and the most effective ways to step in to help proactively. The staff at FTIUM acknowledges that to have a truly holistic training model, we need to address students’ needs beyond proper safety training and certifications.

FTIUM strives to create a positive and supportive school environment. Students are encouraged to talk openly about their struggles to ensure that mental health is no longer a taboo topic in their future workplaces. By promoting an open, empathetic culture at school, those behaviors will transfer to their workplaces and foster a stigma-free environment for generations of future coworkers.

As COVID-19 continues to weigh heavily on our community and many people are out of work or isolated at home, mental health awareness and training are more important than ever. FTIUM’s Change the Culture of Construction Program raises awareness for issues like substance abuse, suicide, and more within the finishing trades industry.

FTIUM will continue to provide resources like these courses to ensure all of our students feel supported at our facilities and into their careers. We will keep talking about it, educating one another on it, and de-stigmatizing it. There is nothing more important than our health – mental and physical. The training center may be a space to work, but they are also a safe space to ask for help if you need it.

If you walked onto a job site in Minneapolis in 2011, you’d see a vast majority of white men aged from about thirty to sixty years old. About a decade ago, that status quo was only beginning to be challenged. The economy wasn’t in a great place after the recession, and it was severely impacting the construction industry. Infrastructure projects were stalled, costing taxpayers billions annually. An underground economy was flourishing where employers routinely misclassified workers as independent contractors instead of employees – a practice that specifically prays on non-white workers. The problems were clear as day, but steps weren’t being proactively taken to mitigate them.

Fast forward to 2020: the Finishing Trades Institute of the Upper Midwest received a generous grant from the Minnesota Department of Labor to foster diversity and inclusion in our apprenticeship program. Apprenticeship participants shot up to 47.9 percent women and minorities. Those same job sites that were mostly white men in 2011 became more diverse, and the benefits were immediately clear.

When a concerted effort was put into training young women and individuals from diverse backgrounds, we predicted that we’d start to engage people from communities that we hadn’t before.

What we didn’t predict is the almost immediate shift in culture at our training facility and on local job sites. Instructors became more invested in the success of all their students, even during the onset of the pandemic. They ramped up communication to ensure students stayed engaged and on track; and students started taking more initiative to get advanced certificates.

Employers started talking more about the importance of diversity and inclusion on their job sites, and the benefits it brings for the mental wellbeing of their employees. We started receiving more engagement from parents of high schoolers and school counselors who were previously more likely to guide students toward traditional four-year colleges. 

A sense of true solidarity was shown when apprentices noticed their colleagues struggling in the workplace, and they began to reach out more to provide emotional support. Though that was what we had all wanted and needed for the past four years, we could never have predicted the impact the conscious decision to become more inclusive would have.

Though we still can’t predict all of the effects these positive efforts will have on our industry, we can make informed guesses thanks to ongoing research by the McKinsey Institute. Based on a year-long research study that focused on the correlation between companies’ profitability and diversity, we can predict that employers who prioritize diversity in their hiring practices are likely to see increased cash flow by about 200 percent over about three years. Apprentices’ performances will more than likely continue to improve. If our employers continue to hire from our diverse program, those employees are about 35 percent more likely to outperform their peers who work at less diverse companies.

One of the most common arguments about diversity in the building trades is that “women don’t want to work these jobs,” or even worse, “construction is a man’s job.” To put it simply, women hadn’t been included in recruitment efforts until very recently. When FTIUM began to specifically reach out to young women and young women of color, they started enrolling in our programs and quickly climbing the ranks in their respective trades. By diversifying our applicant pool and taking a competency-based approach to enrollment in 2020, more women began building their careers in the finishing trades industry.

The women members of the IUPAT experience no pay gap thanks to worker protections that were hard won by consistent, collective actions by tens of thousands of union members. This continues to influence contractors across the country; If those contractors want to earn respect from the public and get the biggest jobs in their regions, they have to first eliminate the pay gap. Efforts like these are what fuels our fire to continue recruiting and training individuals from diverse backgrounds.

The toughest pill to swallow for those of us who work in the building trades industry is that we have been stifling our economic growth for decades by not putting the effort into diversifying our workforce. It’s time for the building trades industry to collectively take a giant step forward and ensure our future will foster economic growth opportunities for employers and workers of all backgrounds. Our economy, our culture, and the future of all of our communities depend on it.

On Friday, October 30th, 2020, 16 students graduated from the Finishing Trades Institute of the Upper Midwest (FTIUM) 5-week Career Readiness Program, a program that prepares students for entry into a Finishing Trades Apprenticeship. The completion of this challenging program, alone, is a clear sign of their commitment to the pursuit of their new craft careers.

This program is funded in part by a $90,000 APEX Construction Career Readiness Training grant the FTIUM received through the MN Dept. of Labor and Industry. The grant funding goal is to address Minnesota’s racial and economic disparities by increasing female and minority participation in registered apprenticeships.

The students were thrilled when Chet’s Shoes brought their expertise and mobile boot truck onsite and personally-fitted each graduate with a brand-new pair of Redwing work boots, which will become an everyday essential in their new career. The boots are just the beginning of the opportunities that will become available to these graduates.

Of the 16 graduates, 8 students boasted perfect attendance, and 5 students are already placed with employers.

It goes to show that FTIUM’s programs produce hardworking, successful individuals.

We wish every one of our APEX Worker Readiness graduates a lifetime of success in the finishing trades and beyond! Our instructors and staff send our heartfelt congratulations to all of our graduates:

Nye Soe K Maw
Natalie Pollard
Blut Doh
Hollin Hackett
Robert Brunt
Alan Thavis
Breanna McDade
Chong Xieng
Hser Plaw
Barbara Dominguez
Richard Dominguez
Christie Wagner
Kwar Nieboer
Huriel Vazquez
Shae Htai
Lily Mitchell