Marine training center enduring tough times

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer

Seven years ago the state sank $6 million into a program to train marine technicians through Honolulu Community College, hoping to provide a work force to serve a booming Ke'ehi Lagoon maritime industry as well as the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard.

Instructor Mark Kimura, middle, works with Steven Roberts, left, and Wylie Hurd on their outboard motor. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

The marine education center was part of a vast dream of former governor John Waihee to reshape the waterfront. But that vision fell apart in the mid-1990s when Hawai'i's economic bubble burst, partly because of Japan's faltering economy. It left an education center still considered one of the four best in the nation, but no new industry to support it.

The program's relationship with Pearl Harbor has also faltered. At first students became automatic apprentices for the shipyard, on track for lucrative shipyard jobs. But that program fell apart three years ago because of coordination problems. And a new, expanded apprenticeship program at Pearl Harbor has had an unintended side effect: siphoning more students away from HCC's marine training center and into paying apprentice jobs on base.

Bob Perkins, program director and instructor, worries about what lies ahead.

"Nobody has said 'Well, if you don't get students, it's going to come to an end,' " Perkins said. "But I just keep thinking, if we don't get students, how can we keep it open? I'm not a brain surgeon, but I'm not an idiot either."

The class of seven current students started as 18 last year. Normally there are 25 per class and at least one freshman and one senior class each year. This year, because of dwindling enrollment, HCC canceled its incoming freshman class and will have no seniors graduating the year after next.

One of the two locked and empty classrooms in the 30,000-square-foot facility is used about 10 nights a month for meetings and seminars run by other marine industries. And two of the four separate shops for teaching woodworking, fiberglass and repair, painting and engine maintenance, are closed. One is being used for storage.

It wasn't that way when the Pearl Harbor apprenticeship program was in full swing. In the beginning, all students enrolled in the program automatically became shipyard apprentices, with job tracks and on-the-job training for good-paying employment.

But eventually it became clear that the students couldn't work full time and study full time, and that the marine center just couldn't provide enough people at the times needed by the shipyard.

"There were a dozen at the most," said Freeman Correa Jr., Pearl Harbor Shipyard production superintendent and apprentice director. "They'd come to work at 6:30 and leave to go to school at 8 and come back to work at 2," Correa said. "I can't expect a supervisor to keep track of all of these guys. We're trying to fix ships ... And not all of the training being given was what we wanted."

So in 1999 the shipyard withdrew its apprenticeship program from the education center in favor of a far bigger, broader and more specific apprenticeship program right on base.

Correa now has 509 apprentices — about one-quarter of the shipyard's work force — and plans to hire 125 more in January.

Perkins has watched his student numbers drop since the automatic apprentice program ended.

"Pearl Harbor wanted better control over it," Perkins said. "They wanted their apprentices out there, with school time scheduled around their work time to fit into their shipyard work day."

But the marine education center has struggled in other ways, too.

Essentially it's an anomaly from Hawai'i's boom days of the early 1990s when Waihee had his vision to redesign the waterfront. He dreamed of thousands of new boat slips, perhaps even landing the prestigious America's Cup races for Hawai'i.

Then the bubble burst, with Japan's economic crisis, the loss of tourism because of the Gulf War, and the withdrawal of Japanese investment from the Islands.

"About the only part of what happened is the Marine Training and Education Center," Perkins said. "None of the infrastructure in Ke'ehi has taken place."

HCC provost Ramsey Pedersen said the program needs to be revamped and take on new directions, perhaps becoming more of an industry training center than a degree-granting program.

But HCC and the shipyard continue to collaborate and have put together the current vastly expanded apprentice program at Pearl Harbor; it's working well for the shipyard, and for applicants lucky enough to get into it but it has also drawn its numbers from those who might otherwise attend the marine training program.

Under the reorganization, students attend classes taught by HCC instructors on base for one week each month, then learn on the job for the other three. Correa said the paid program combining work /study better serves the needs of the shipyard and seems more attractive to students.

As HCC looks at reshaping the focus of the boat maintenance and repair program, it will be working with an industry council to offer advice on new directions. Correa is on that council and is encouraging HCC to offer more specialized courses that fit the needs of the industry, and even the Pearl Harbor shipyard, now.

"I need welding, blueprint training, rigging training," he said. "They're trying to change, which is good. They've got a real cool facility and they need to promote that facility to the rest of the industry. What they're doing now is a start in the right direction."