this webinar today. My name is Jason Blake and I have Marty McCormick with us. We're going to talk about three components today. This is the final of our webinar series and today is we're going to talk about the future of the AAD Foundation, the future of our industry and talk about some of the goals that AAD has put together focusing in a year data of 2024. We're going to break this into three components. First, we'll talk a little bit about what we've been doing the last two, three years. A lot of you may have heard some of this, but we've kind of put it together so that you can kind of see where we were and where we're going. Then we're going to talk a little bit about what we call Vision 2024. That's our campaign to address the skill gap issue. You may have seen a lot of the posting and LinkedIn and social media, but we wanted to give you a kind of feel for kind of the inner workings of that and how it affects you going forward, how it will benefit you more. Then finally, we want to talk a little bit about the category that we started for schools. We've started a membership category for schools and that will be a lot different than what you've seen in the past. We've had instructors and schools join our membership, but what we've learned in the last six months to COVID is that there is a need for these types of webinars. There's a need for our instructors to collaborate going forward. For us to do that, it made sense for us to start a membership category. With that membership category, we are going to increase the value to the instructors, the services that we offer to instructors. We'll talk a lot about what that means. In addition to that, as we roll out the category and we build this membership and this group of instructors who will work together in the next three or four years to get to our Vision 2024, we will ask for your suggestions and comments because you will be members of the association and the foundation. It won't change anything for those who are not members. It's just that for those of you who become members, there will be additional products that will be available to you going forward. With that, I'm going to go right into the presentation and just review a couple things as far as what the mission of the foundation is all about. I'm going to throw that over to Marty. Marty's going to walk you through the first component of this. Thank you very much, Jason, and welcome everybody this morning. Thank you for taking time out of your schedules again for our last series. I know a lot of folks are pretty familiar with the foundation, but we wanted to give a little background on the foundation. Our overarching mission is to support our AED member companies. Primarily, we do that through our accreditation program in ensuring that there are qualified students graduating from our accredited foundation college programs who can then work with AED members at their dealerships. We have a big focus on promoting continuous learning. Learning obviously doesn't stop once you're finished with the college program. We have a number of certified manager programs and on-demand webinars similar to this, where employees can get continuing education. That's a huge focus and very popular with many of our AED members. Then really the third component, which we're very proud of, is developing and maintaining industry standards. We'll be getting a little bit more into the industry standards later, but again, we're uniquely positioned where we're able to bring in a lot of experts and ensure that the standards are moving forward and are preparing students for a future in the workforce. I wanted to delve a little bit into our key focus areas. As I just mentioned, accreditation, as far as we know, we're really the only non-OEM body that provides accreditation. Again, we're at nearly 60 accredited college programs across the country. I think we're at just about 10 recognized high school programs. As we get into our discussion about our Vision 2024 strategic plan, we'll be discussing our plans for growth, especially within the realm of accreditation. Moving forward to career promotion, especially for the equipment industry, career promotion is very important. We've really put a focus on beefing up our social media, getting out more content that can be provided to future technicians, students, parents, educators, other stakeholders, really trying to dispel some of the myths that have, unfortunately, been perpetuated and still exist for some folks. We're working on getting some video content to put out and, again, being able to share that with our school partners, our dealer partners, and our other AEB members as well. And then looking at our final component is our research. We're really the leading organization that provides industry-specific research. And, again, we find that the research is very important for a number of reasons. Primarily, it helps quantify the issues that our membership sees day-to-day. One of our primary reports that came out a few years back showed that the technician shortage is costing the industry about 2.4 billion dollars in potential revenue. And so these types of reports are very helpful when anyone is able to use these. These are free resources that can be shared, again, with stakeholders, with policymakers and elected officials in Washington, D.C., but even down at the local level with school districts to show the need for the industry. And our plan is to continue to put out those timely reports. And, again, all of those reports are accessible for free on our foundation's website. So if you haven't perused those in the past, we'd love for you to check those out as well. Some of you may have seen this slide before, but the AED Foundation is very uniquely positioned where we are able to, on the industry side, again, we have approximately 750 members of our AED Trade Association, over 400 dealer members, and so we have a strong relationship with industry. We're also able to work with government. On the foundation side, unlike AED, we are restricted from doing any sort of lobbying work, but we are allowed to do advocacy work and to provide information about the challenges that the equipment industry faces. So we've put a focus on engaging with state CTE directors, career and technical education directors across the country to ensure that those departments understand the issues that the equipment industry is having. And then, again, obviously working with our school partners, educational partners, really tying that all together. We're uniquely positioned as a foundation to be able to tie this all together to really drive workforce development, really to drive the conversation to the next level in a way that it's difficult for one of our dealer members to necessarily engage, again, with school partners and governmental partners in the same way that our foundation can just because we have that strength in numbers, and we have the relationships built up in each of those different areas. Thanks, Marty. We'll go into the meat of our challenge. And this is really the state of our industry right now. And a lot of the data that we pull from that has been research reports that the foundation has compiled together. Our most recent research report stated that we were next five years, we're going to need 70,000 heavy equipment technician positions across our industry. And so with that, in the past, we've stated that we have about a $2.4 billion shortage and lost productivity because of this technician shortage. So we're really going into the at this point, this the perfect perfect storm here. In addition to that, you know, 94% of our AED dealerships have job openings that are above the national average. So a lot of what you're seeing in this slide probably won't surprise you because as instructors, you're living this day to day. And then finally, the last time we surveyed our members, they said 62% say local education institutions in their area do not understand the company's workforce needs. That's gone up drastically. When we first surveyed our members, it was around 35%. So we've seen a significant increase in that. So although we're not at 100%, right now, we all want to be at the top, we're all trying to be high performers, we've come a long way. And and that is to credit the you know, the institutions that have are credited with the foundation. And if you go if you think back to Marty slide, it's really the model that we've put together, where 80 tries to be the organization that kind of facilitates all these different agencies that have a focus in getting a school accredited. So with all that all these things going on with the you know, the 70,000 technicians needed with the the $2.4 billion that were in lost revenue, it really made sense for the ad foundation to go out and put a stake in the ground. And so at our board meeting in last year, we committed as an organization to put 10,000 trained technicians into the workforce in the next five years. So by the end of 2023, we will, we will accomplish a training 10,000 technicians. Now to do that, it's really two faceted. And you can see that, you know, that that the amount trained per year increases increases. So first of all, we have to increase our colleges and the programs that we're are accrediting, and, and we're doing that slowly. So as we move into 2021 2022, the programs continue to go up. Now, there will also be additional component of that that we will be adding, probably around the October timeframe will be validating and crediting apprentice programs going forward through the IRAP program of Department of Labor. And so we we estimate that we will probably get about 8000 trained technicians by 2024, through our current accredited programs, and about 2000, or so from our apprentice programs as as that rolls out. So to accomplish where we got today, we had to change the way we looked at things. And I just wanted to share with you, for those schools that are new, and we really need the schools that are accredited to understand how we go through this process. We do know, right now, we've prospected about 275 schools in our database right now we've categorized, categorized them through an A through an E prospect list and E being maybe they don't have a facility right now. And they're looking at doing that a being they pretty much got everything ready to roll. And once we prospected them, and they're ready to roll, then we move them on to our accreditation cycle. And so our accreditation cycle now takes about a year to a year and a half to complete. Most of you are familiar with our accreditation cycle, I won't spend too much time on this, but I want to see how we've really broken it down. So in fact, we've kind of got a we've got a got scientific with this as we each school that is in this phase has been marked. And we monitor these phases as they go through the program. So we can look at the beginning of the year. And if things are working, well, we probably have about 1718 schools in phase one, as they move through the phases, you know, we evaluate that halfway through, they should probably be around phase three. And, and hopefully, by the end of the year, or early in the next year, we've got them coming out for the last team visit. But what has changed in the last three years, and maybe you've heard or noticed is that the foundation is much more hands on, we have we employ in ETLs. Now to go out, we pay them to evaluate you and in the skill gap analysis, which is really the, you know, the first phase of that of the audit. And then they, you know, they're kind of working through the some of the issues that you see, to get you to the final phase, if you're not accredited at this point. Now, another change is in phase one is that ad the foundation is really walking hand in hand, we usually have a kickoff advisory committee, some of you may have been part of these advisory committees where we really kick this off a lot of times myself, Marty or Lindley are at that event, it helps for us to really hold everybody accountable on both sides of the coin. And with that, you can see that the changes since we've implemented the the profiling and the phases. So this was, you know, in 2017, is these are the programs that we were complete every year. In 2017, at the end of the year, we rolled out the new productivity changes. And we've seen some nice increases. And to the out to 2019, where we had a record year, we accredited and recognized over nine high schools and colleges at this point. And I believe right now, Lindley's got us at least has us about 10 schools for the year of high schools and, and accredited school. So we're at that mark in a year of, you know, COVID, which is a good year for us. And wanted to jump back in and talk a little bit about the, you know, the economic decision that students are making, as they, you know, decide upon, you know, their career path after, after the high school level. And as you can see here, we've put together this chart. And what we really have shown is that a student going through a, an accredited college program can be, you know, compared to a student who's going to a four year traditional bachelor degree type program, they're gonna be a $300,000 difference when it comes to college debt, and loans that you may be paying back down the road. And as the foundation has said, we're, our focus is not to, there are some students that definitely need to go to four year degrees, if you're looking at a career as a doctor, attorney, things of that nature. But for a lot of students who again, who have an interest who may have gone through one of our recognized programs, that's a huge, that's a huge dollar amount, especially in these uncertain economic times. And so we're really want to, we continue to focus on this as another, another opportunity to change the perception, especially among parents, guidance counselors and students, to ensure that students understand that when they go through these accredited college programs, they're looking at much less than maybe no college debt, and also a great career opportunity moving forward. So we'll continue to promote this and use this as an as an avenue to, to really push change for the industry and change perceptions. And this next slide here, we've, we've put together this information. And I think pretty much most of our, our dealer members understand this. And I'm sure the educators and the folks on this call understand this as well. But a highly qualified technician is, is critical to a dealership, an AED dealership. And we've shown that it's, you know, again, highly qualified technicians bringing in, you know, on average about $266,000 in revenue for a dealership. And so this is a, again, really a win win, the technicians providing a lot of value to the dealership, and they're able to work their way up at the dealership. And again, I think this is a number that's, that's very important. And we'd be happy if you if you share that with students as well, because the technicians, again, as you can see, are very important to the operations at an AED dealership. Thanks, Marty. So those last two slides really show shows you how our examples how we really have to motivate the teachers, we have to motivate the the parents and the students, showing you know, showing that graph where there is a variance difference about 300,000 is a great way to do it. This slide really shows us shows the dealers are really they're in because they know that every qualified technician they get they're going to get out or is going to make them some profit and drive about 266,000 revenue as as Marty stated. Want to walk you through now about what you know what the future is for AED and where what kind of what pathway we're going down. As educators, a lot of you know, the big buzzword is the you know, through through CTE is career pathway. And I keep referring to the board meeting last year that we had with the foundation. But the board really challenged us to expand our education so that, you know, but it's, you know, as everyone knows, by the time a student has made a decision to go on to it, our one of our credit colleges, you know, they, that's really far down the road, and we really need to get influence on them earlier. And so to do that, we really had to, you know, work backwards. And so what we'll be launching in the August, September timeframe is really what we're calling the high school value rate valuation proposition here. And so these components going at this point, are broken down in these four, four areas, we'll be offering stackable credentials. So there's the introductory courses, there'll be a safety course, a hydraulics course, electrical course, our biggest our biggest focus, and we're where we're seeing that recognized high schools are getting, we're recognizing more high schools as we're offering a $2,000 scholarship to about 64 students in the fall and in the spring semesters. And that'll be for moving on to the next level, either in one of our accredited school schools throughout the United States and Canada. And finally, we are offering a high school certification test that's been validated by our standards committee. And we feel that that gives students an opportunity to show what they've learned so far. These things are important for a couple reasons, because a lot of what they're doing is bringing exposure to that student first to move them on to our accredited program. But secondly, they're giving exposure to the dealers, dealers. Our hope is that, as most of you are aware, we see that most of our students are working with a dealer when they go into one of our accredited programs. And so we want to get them some more benefits that they can put on their resume. Taking a safety class taking an introductory to hydraulics class through an online course is a great way to show that you're you're learning and you've got the basics down. Taking the high school certification test allows the dealer to get a feel for what they know their knowledge and the dealer can help in their education process going forward. And then finally, giving them some awarding them a grant, these students a grant so that the cost of education is, is, is lower for them going forward when they move on to an accredited program really gives us a huge gives them a huge leg up. And really, it gets us at the high school level, which we're focusing on. So we've seen a nice uptick in that we've increased our recognized program by 100% this year. And we're really excited as we're just really rolling this out the door. So we've got the high school component of that really addressed at this point. And now we're going to move down to the middle school. Right now, you can see I've got 13 to 16. So it still includes the high school, but we're we're introducing an aptitude test, the free aptitude test. And what that basically entails is, you know, knowing the basics of what our technicians need need to know. And that'd be, for example, you know, measurements, tools, oil changes, some real small components of that that's been validated by our standards committee. Also, the hope is that, you know, we'll be offering a social media program on this, you know, we're gonna we're not doing the standard email program, we're going to try to hit these these these age group here, have them take the test, compile that database, share it with the school share with the dealers, so that we can build this pipeline, they're going to be more coming at the middle school in the next two or three years, as we get the high school program off the ground. So this is really just a breakdown of the high school program, if you were to take the industry aptitude test, build some awareness, get the scholarships, get take some stackable credentials and then finish off with your high school certification test. So I did want to just share with you real quick, we currently have four tests that are out there. Actually, we have three tests and one test is used two different ways. We have the industry aptitude test, which I just talked about in the high school certification test, but we also have our our AD certification test that's taken at the college level. The certification test can be used two ways, a lot of our members use it to assess. And if there's some deficiencies in certain areas, such as hydraulics, they can set up training going forward for them. Our hope is, as we as we're working on this, we're going to have some online courses. So our dealers are assessing their their new hires or some of their current technicians and if there are some deficiencies, we'll be offering some online components of that going forward to address some of those needs. But I just wanted to show you some of the products that we have out from a testing component. And then finally, off to your right, you see that the patch that a certified diesel technician is awarded after they pass the AD certification test. And that is the test that all your students take at this point are required to take. One moment here. So we'll go through this really fast, but I think it's important to, a lot of times when we start, we kick off a accredited school, and we probably have never shared this with our current accredited schools, but for us to continue our program at the highest level, it's important for the members to know, and the schools know, it costs about $94,000, almost $100,000 to accredit a school. That's all the staff's time, that's the cost to get the ETLs out there twice, and it's about a year and a half time frame. And so it's not as important to the school, but I just want to give you a feel for that as you talk to your advisory committees. A lot of the advisory committees are contributors of the foundation. We have an average contribution rate of about $3,000. We look at the, you know, that component of it as a membership also. It's really buying into what the AD foundation is trying to accomplish. In addition to that, you know, upon accreditation, this is one area that we have to do a better job, and we'll be addressing in the next couple years. You know, our goal is to have 100 programs rolling out by 2024. At that point, we're at critical mass. I would foresee more engagement at the accredited level, newsletters coming out, increased awareness and validity of our standards. You know, instead of meeting every two years, we're probably meeting every year. In addition to that would be, you know, more webinars. We probably would have a full-time staff member managing just the accredited programs on around 2024 because we really hit critical mass. And so more to come on that, but that's kind of where our vision is from that standpoint. And then this just highlights the school and the industry's roles. It's important for everybody to understand where they're at. Most of you are familiar with the school's commitment. You've been accredited. You've been successful in that. But a lot of times it's important for us to address the industry commitment. And in the industry commitment, I think the three, the components are really important as you've probably gone through the process and aware of is supporting the program, being part of the advisory committee, and you know, either renting or offering equipment so that we can fulfill all the standards that are needed. We also ask them for a three-year commitment, financial pledge to the AED Foundation. We also ask them to be AED members. So I'm going to kick it back over to Marty at this point to walk through some of the next steps for instructors. So as I'm sure most of the folks on the webinar here are familiar with, we've, the foundation really, really put a major focus on shifting after the COVID-19 outbreak in mid-March. Obviously, that totally changed life as we knew it. And I know for educators, there's an added component of, you know, ensuring that folks are still able to teach, you know, students to the best of their ability, either in a blended or virtual setting. So we really put a focus on putting out a lot of webinars, some of them just more general about government programs, such as PPP, Main Street Lending Program, for our AED membership in general. And then again, starting this summer, we released our instructor-specific webinars, which we're obviously concluding this morning. And we plan to continue the webinar offerings moving forward as well as another way to ensure there's collaboration and ensure that there's an opportunity for the foundation to be getting out useful information to our school partners moving forward. And I wanted to kind of jump to our next focus. We have put together an educator survey. So be on the lookout for that. We're going to be sending that out, I believe, in the next week or two to all of our accredited college programs, recognized programs, and the prospective schools that Lindley is working with as well. We want to, again, gauge what the current educational climate is and see, you know, the best way moving forward for our foundation to provide resources to schools. Again, this is a very unique time, and we want to make sure that we're able to offer the best help and advice that we can. Anyone who does fill out that survey will get the compiled results as well, if you're interested in what folks are doing in other parts of the country or different levels, you know, either college or the high school level. So again, be on the lookout for that. And looking at the engagement, again, we are very focused on trying to ensure that there's strong engagement. We were sadly obviously not able to do our in-person instructors conference this summer. And so again, just looking for other opportunities and ways to engage instructors and other folks as we move forward, again, in more of a virtual type setting. I wanted to give everyone just a little preview of 2021. And I think we're all hoping that, you know, we get the vaccine rolled out and we're able to get back to some normalcy with regard to in-person visiting, in-person classes. As I mentioned before, we're planning to have our instructors conference next summer, again, being postponed due to the COVID outbreak. And as soon as we get the dates and location finalized, we'll get that out to the group moving forward. I'll touch on this a little bit more in the next slide, but we will be having our technical training committee meeting at AED Summit in the spring. And then looking ahead, we, in 2019, had a very successful opportunity of AED's Washington Fly-In to put together kind of a focused breakout group that really focused on career and technical education and workforce development. We had a group of folks, Jason and myself included, who made several visits to leading legislators on Capitol Hill, speaking with their staffs about the big focus, the challenges for the equipment industry, and the need for closing the skills gap and providing Perkins funding, making sure that that stays stable or ideally gets increased moving forward. We're looking forward to doing that again, again, probably in the summer time frame next year. And as we had mentioned before, really want to continue to put a focus on instructor-specific webinars. We're looking at doing those quarterly in 2021, and we'll be, I'm sure, getting feedback from folks about topics that would be most ideal to cover moving forward in the 2021 timeframe. So just a little, just a note here about the technical training committee. As I mentioned, the plan is for that committee to be meeting at Summit, which will be in Las Vegas in spring of 2021. Again, this meeting, this training committee meets every three years to review all of the industry standards. Very important task. A big focus for the meeting coming up at Summit will be looking at ensuring the validity of the test questions that we offer, including looking at the online testing standards, which will be very important in light of COVID-19 and the need to have more testing done online will be a big focus in addition to updating classroom personnel standards to, again, reflect the realities of COVID-19, such as social distancing and everything else that folks are experiencing in the education setting and across the workforce. And again, typically the standards are reviewed in smaller breakout sessions with folks involved in each different subcategory, including troubleshooting, engine repair, electronic control systems. Again, with the overarching focus on ensuring that our standards are up to par with what the industry needs. And again, we appreciate everyone who is currently on that committee. It is a time consuming process and it's very important to our industry to ensure that we maintain those high quality standards and looking forward to that meeting coming up next year. If anyone does have specific questions on that, Lindley will be the point person. If you're interested in participating or if you have any ideas for that committee, please, please touch base with Lindley. I think, I hope everyone on the, did you want to jump in Jason or? Sure. So we're going to go through a final slide here on the new membership category that I mentioned at the beginning of our presentation that we're rolling out. And in addition, I really want to state that this membership is really moving our organization to the next level with our instructors. And I think Marty will take you through some of the deeper detail of this, of what we're offering in the next year or so. But I think overall, this is really the focus, take the foundation and the association to the next level. And I'll let Marty walk through some of the value proposition of this, the membership. Thanks, Jason. Just kind of jumping in, we really noticed as we've talked throughout the webinar that there's really not an industry specific national organization that allows for collaboration with instructors. The feedback we've received from previous instructors conferences is that is such a huge, a huge need and super helpful. And so we really want to fit that, fill in there and ensure that that collaboration is possible, especially in these times where obviously things are going much more virtual and being done over Zoom and Microsoft Teams and not as much in person. And so we really think the membership allows, will allow AED to, our focus has always been on strength in numbers. And when our membership is very strong and we're really able to more effectively support the future of the industry. And so looking at the instructors conference moving forward for schools that join as members of AED, they'll be provided with two complimentary registrations to that conference moving forward. There'll be a 20% discount for the five-year reaccreditation fee for schools. And again, we're looking at continuing to offer webinars that will be provided for free of charge for AED members moving forward. Again, probably on the, on a quarterly basis, really, again, really focused on instructor specific content, making sure that it's guided on feedback from the instructors on this webinar and from our entire school partnership team. And really ensuring again at Summit and at future conferences that AED puts on, ensuring that we have instructor specific networking events, primarily at our AED Summit for folks who have not gone before. We're really planning to put a focus there to ensure that instructors can again, collaborate ideally, you know, multiple times a year and learn more about what's going on, the latest technology, getting updates with regard to career and technical education advances that are happening in Washington, DC or at the state level. And so really, really continuing to put a focus on that. And I think importantly as well, continuing to foster and build those strong relationships that we have with our equipment dealerships and manufacturers. I know a lot of the schools here, I'm sure also have strong relationships and we want to continue to build that, build that out moving forward to really provide an additional value. And again, you know, with the overarching belief for us is ensuring that there's strong enrollment at the colleges and for the high school programs moving forward to ensure that your programs stay robust in future years. So to just add to what Marty said that we currently have, I believe, two schools who have joined the membership. The membership dollar, the price is $2,000 per school per year. And, you know, with that, I mean, pretty much the membership pays for the conferences that we're offering, the free instructor's conference. With the instructor's conference, I just want to make sure everybody understands that, you know, in the past we, you know, we were, you know, we did a lot of focus on the industry component of it, made sure we had particular topics that, you know, would help you train and you could get your accreditation certifications on that component or to validate your certifications. But we, you know, we have a hope of, we don't have a hope. We are, we will deliver more higher quality speakers. And, you know, those will be, we'll have paid speakers, we'll have breakout sessions. We're going to mirror this a little, a lot like we do our, with our regular members. It's just going to be very focused on the instructors. So I think there's a lot to offer, a lot of exciting things to come. And we're hoping that, you know, we get full participation from our schools at this point as we take this to the next level. So we finished, we were planning to talk to for about 45 minutes. We finished a few minutes early. We'll feel any questions if any of the instructors have any questions at this point. I do have questions from our instructors. Okay. I am trying to, here we go. So many different things on Zoom. You know, I don't need to turn my video on. I'll just go ahead and field them. So Gary Maki wants a couple of questions answered. He wants additional details on the high school assessment. Now, I would like to know if Gary wants to know more about the aptitude test or if he's looking towards the high school certification test. So maybe we could cover a little bit on each of those, Jason. And the reason that he wants to know is because he thinks he's going to be able to use this as evidence for an articulated course. He was also wondering if we could put together a condensed version of this and then in parentheses, particularly Marty's ROI college cost suitable for our students that would help us drive home the value of AED school recognition or accreditation. Okay. So if I understand the question, I mean, I'd have to, I think first of all, you know, each test is really focused on a certain age group. So, you know, the aptitude test is very, very basic. I have not taken the test myself, but, you know, we've had it validated with the standards committee. If you want to know the details of that, we certainly can have Lindley, you know, share the test with you. We can have one of the ETLs get on a call with you to validate the test. We can talk through that. High school test is really just, you know, a process, the stair step into the accreditation. So it's, you know, it was valid again, about the same theme as the aptitude test. You know, we have experts that run those standards. I am not an expert in those components of it. So if you want to really know the, you know, the inner components of that, we would probably have to set up some time that you could go through it with them and get some more information. So did I answer that question as best as I could? Yep. The only, the only question that I have left here is, are we looking for high school test expiration? Will it have a different patch? And this is from Gary Kappich. A test expiration. So is the way I understand that question is, will this test ever expire? Does that always, can we get him on live or? Answer live. Is he going to get on? Hi, Jerry. Hi. Can you hear me now? Yeah. Okay. What I was looking at is, I know when they were showing the patches, yesterday, it looked like the same patch. I don't know if the patch is going to be different than the actual certification patch. Yeah. So I was looking at the patch being different and I know right now that the technician certification does not expire. It's a one-time thing. And I had talked about with Lindley about that possibly expiring so the technician could retake the test and recertify. So right now I know that's not in the works, but I was looking at the high school that expiring so they do move on and get the actual certification after they get some experience. That's what I was looking at. Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure. Maybe it's just a terminology thing. I think our viewpoint is that it's, they finish up that test and it's a step into the next component of that. I think it's, once they take the test and pass it, it's kind of theirs for life. I mean, they can use that. But I mean, again, I think just the progression and someone who's 30 years old who passed the high school certification test probably wouldn't put that in their resume. And also it kind of expires by itself. I don't think there's any plans of it offering expiration. We have had talks of, we have the regular certification test that all your students take at the college level is down the road offering an advanced one so that there'd be a different component and there'd be an expiration. Okay. So what you're saying is if they do continue on to post-secondary, then that certification will be different than the high school certification? Oh yeah, absolutely. It's completely different. And we don't have any, at this point, I mean, we may try to do something different, but that patch, it really means a lot in our industry. We wouldn't offer that for the high school students. If we did offer a patch because they would want something like that, it would be completely different. So that's what I was thinking of is offering them a patch, but a different patch. Yeah. I mean, we certainly can look at that. Okay. It would give them some, when they do receive the patch, that does really motivate them. Yeah, I hear you. That's why we created the first one. We're rolling out the program and there's certain things that we'll be adding. It's a good suggestion. Okay. Thank you. I think the last two questions slash statements I can hear pretty much answer for y'all. As far as additional materials about the Caterpillar grant to use as a recruiting tool, I have sent these materials out to all the instructors numerous times, but I will do so again after this call as a refresher. So everyone has the most up-to-date information on the grant. Also, Gary Mahey wanted to ensure that we're getting the info out for instructors conference as soon as possible. As I've heard this for many instructors is the fiscal year runs from July 1st to June 30th. So when they don't have a conference in until like later spring or even early spring, the budgets are usually depleted at that point. So it's just a little. Yeah, I hear you on that one, Gary. It's a little different world out there in event planning. And so unfortunately, when we put together a conference, we have to sign a contract. And so with some of the unknowns, there's going to be a tighter time frame on this. I have to just be honest with you, I can't take a financial exposure when I don't know what's going to be happening in June. We've put a lot of our events in the association side we pushed out. So we'll do our best to get that out there. But we're just going to have to see how that plays out. It'll be in the end of the summer time frame. But we'll just have to see how that plays out. Well, if anyone else doesn't have any additional questions, I'd like to thank you all for your attendance at all five of the Instructor Series Conference through the AV Foundation. If you have any additional questions on any of the series or materials that you've seen over the last couple weeks through Tim Dell's instruction, or through this final presentation with Jason and Marty, feel free to contact me anytime. I'm pretty sure most of you have my email and contact information. So I wish all of you a great weekend. If there's anything else I'm missing, Jason or Marty, I will call an end to this meeting and thank everyone again. Everybody have a good day. Take care.

webinar

AED Foundation

industry

goals

2024

membership category

accreditation program

continuous learning