ML25083A277
| ML25083A277 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 03/24/2025 |
| From: | Chan A NRC/RES/PMDA |
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| Download: ML25083A277 (19) | |
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Transcript February 27, 2025, 3:04PM Anita Chan 0:04 We're going to go ahead and have opening remarks.
We will start with Mike King with remarks from the ADVANCE Act.
Mike King 0:16 Well, good morning, everybody and welcome to.
To one of several different public meetings that we've been having over the course of the past eight months since the ADVANCE Act was signed into law by Congress.
And you know, I don't want to spend a whole lot of time, but I wanted to, you know, share with you that, you know, we do have a couple of upcoming key activities that will provide an opportunity to see kind of big picture what's going on with the.
ADVANCE Act. Beyond this topic of the traineeship program, one is next Tuesday on the fourth in the morning, we'll be having a Commission meeting to kind of go over big picture, what's going on with the ADVANCE Act and our current status and near term activities. And then the following week is our big annual Regulatory Information conference. And in case you're unaware, that's our that's a very large conference.
Three thousand attendees. It's a hybrid event, so you can participate remotely and over forty different countries typically attend, and we have a number of sessions.
Think there's the latest count is about ten or eleven sessions that will touch on different portions of the ADVANCE Act. If you go to the next slide. Yeah, just a reminder, we do have a public website. And we have a total of thirty-six different activities that we're tracking at the agency level associated with the ADVANCE Act.
And on that website you can see here you can it's interactive, you can hover over any of those activities and you can see what's going on and a staff point of contact, so if you got information you want to share or your question, you can reach out to the staff points of contacts and the next slide also wanted to highlight in case there are topics that you're interested in that you just weren't able to meet or attend the public meetings, we've made it easy for you. At the bottom of that main page there's a link for upcoming meetings. So all the meetings that we've announced are consolidated there and past meetings. So if you missed a meeting, you could click on that and can easily get any materials or meeting summaries. From any of those
meetings, and then finally, I'll notice that you, you can also and we have been receiving lots of ideas from the public. You can go to the link at the bottom right of that page and it'll take you here to the contact US form and it doesn't have to be a question. It could just be an idea you want to share with us. Feedback. Anything you got on your mind, associate with any of these topics. Please feel free to go there and submit to us or you can just send an e-mail to that address, and we've gotten lots of ideas so far. In fact, some of our early Congressional reports that we've submitted on the ADVANCE Act have incorporated some ideas that we've received through here.
Please continue to submit those ideas. And that's it for my opening remarks.
Hopefully we have a good meeting. Thanks.
Anita Chan 3:32 Thank you so much, Mike.
We also have Bo Pham from the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research.
Bo Pham 3:39 Thanks Anita.
Thanks Mike.
Good morning, everyone.
My name is Bo Pham.
I'm the acting deputy director for the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research at the NRC want to welcome Industry Representative, University Partners current and former grantees and representatives of other agencies who may be at the webinar session this day this morning. The main purpose of our meeting today is to gather public comments for consideration as we formulate and implement the new traineeship program as directed by Section 402 of the ADVANCE Act. We previously held a public meeting back in October last year, but that was more broad as it covered more overarching aspects of the ADVANCE Act and Mike had mentioned earlier today, we'll be focusing more specifically on Section 402 and its requirements for establishing the traineeship program under the NRC. The existing university Nuclear Leadership program, which is administered by the NR CS Office of Research.
I will also note early on here that as we work towards establishing the program, which is required under the ADVANCE Act, we'll also have to ensure compliance with the ongoing set of White House Executive Orders and any companion guidance
associated with those as well. So I look forward to hearing the comments and I'll pass it back to Anita then.
Anita Chan 5:02 Thank you so much. So welcome again. At this point, we are going to move into looking at the specifics of Section 402. As you know, the ADVANCE Act was signed into law in July 2024 and requires the NRC to take a number of actions, particularly in the areas of licensing of new reactors and fuels, while maintaining the NRC score mission to protect public health and safety. Section 402 in particular goes into this the development of a traineeship subprogram in order to support NRCS mission.
The first part of the ADVANCE Act as stated is that the Commission shall establish a subprogram of the program in coordination with institutions of higher education and trade schools, shall competitively award traineeships that provide focused training to meet critical mission needs of the Commission and nuclear workforce needs, including needs relating to the nuclear tradecraft workforce. So in considering this, NRC is working to establish the traineeship as a subprogram of the University Nuclear Leadership Program or UNLP as it is often referenced. Currently, UNLP award scholarships, fellowships, distinguished faculty development, and mission related research and development grants to trade schools, community colleges and institutions of higher education (IHEs) through a competitive application process in the form of grant awards. This would be a new subprogram dedicated to a traineeship experience for students at IHEs and trade schools. Under consideration is that the nuclear energy traineeship would be structured to include theoretical learning through educational experiences such as coursework, seminars, workshops, specialized training, and include a structure work-based training experience for students. Also under consideration for the establishment of the traineeship subprogram are that students funded under the traineeship would be required to complete all specified programmatic requirements as designed by the trade school or IHE, in collaboration with the training requirements with the partner organization.
NRC would like to consider a traineeship agreement that would require students to commit to completing the program in its entirety.
The requirements as stated in the ADVANCE Act is that the nuclear energy traineeship subprogram shall coordinate with the Secretary of Energy to prioritize
funding of traineeships that focus on nuclear workforce needs and critical mission needs of the Commission. In developing the program under the current budgeted resources, NRC is considering that we have coordinated with the Department of Energy to consider critical workforce needs and traineeship priorities related to the development, construction, and maintenance of the nuclear industry and the Commission back when we had our initial meeting in October and subsequently after that as well.
As stated in the ADVANCE Act, the Nuclear Energy traineeship subprogram shall encourage appropriate partnerships among national laboratories, IHEs, trade schools, the nuclear energy industry and other nuclear related entities, as the Commission determines to be appropriate. Considerations for appropriate partnerships are ones that would be led by a trade school or IHE, in collaboration with a new with the national laboratory, nuclear energy industry, or other nuclear energy related entity that will provide a structured hands-on work based training experience for students.
NRC is also considering that the structured training experience include substantial time at the partner site beyond what may be considered in a traditional internship type of experience for students. NRC is considering a minimum of 1 semester for trade programs and one academic year for Institutions of Higher Education of on-site training experiences for students.
As stated in the ADVANCE Act, NRC will evaluate nuclear workforce needs on an annual basis for the purpose of implementing traineeships and focus topical areas that address the specific workforce needs of the nuclear energy community and support the critical mission needs of the Commission. So, in coordination with.
Department of Energy, Nuclear Energy Industry and the NRC. The following projected workforce needs are in consideration for traineeships. So far, students completing a certificate or associate degree program in a trade or technical field, we would like to consider traineeships related to electricians, radiation protection technicians, non-destructive evaluation technicians, I&C technicians and welders.
For students completing a bachelor, master, or doctoral degree program at an institution of higher education, we would like to consider traineeships that advance the field of radiation protection and health physics, electrical engineering as related to digital I&C, and fields related to the advancement of new and advanced reactors.
We are currently continuing our work to establish the traineeship as required by the ADVANCE Act. While the NRC continues to ensure compliance with the White House's executive orders and companion guidance this is the current timeline that we are anticipating. But again, we will consider the executive orders and guidance as we set this timeline in practice. Our current timeline includes some major tasks associated with establishing the traineeship. First is to evaluate the nuclear workforce needs and determine considerations for the initial design. Currently we're in development of the specific programmatic requirements, including any feedback and comments for consideration from today. And currently we have an anticipated posting date of the funding opportunity announcement in July 2025 with an anticipated award date in April 2026.
At this time we are going to transition to any questions and comments regarding Section 402 of the ADVANCE Act. To participate in Q&A and comments, you must raise your hand in order in order to indicate your desire to make a statement. If you are in the TEAMS meeting, you can go ahead and raise your hand. If you are on the phone you will press *5. You will wait for a facilitator to acknowledge your turn to speak. We will try to limit any comments to three minutes initially just to make sure that all comments are able to be received. In order to unmute yourself you will then use the unmute or mic button and then on the phone press *6.
I see. Lori Brady. I am unmuting. Allowing your mic so you can unmute yourself and make any comment.
Lori Brady 13:09 Good morning.
Thank you so much for having this meeting today, we appreciate it.
I do want to begin by thanking the NRC for them for their efforts and putting together the new traineeship program under the UNLP with the goal of awarding funds in in April. We applaud your efforts.
Overall, the commercial industry concurs with most of the positions that you listed in your slides as being the most critically needed for the industry at the moment.
We also agree that the ongoing workforce analysis is critical to making sure that the
traineeship program is adjusted as needed to best meet the needs of the industry at any given time, particularly with ADVANCE reactors on the horizon and we're happy to help provide information and feedback as requested to help with that process. We believe that there are some potential challenges related to the existing programmatic requirements shown in your slides that we'd like you to further consider first given the language regarding the work based training on a partner site.
We just want to keep in mind that there are potentially security issues that could present an obstacle. In other words, making sure that students can get the necessary access authorization to the parts of the sites that most relevant to their training.
We also believe that in some cases, the distance between the academic institutions and partner sites could be an impediment for some students, given the distance involved between the two.
So given that we thought it would be great if we could consider alternate approaches to training. For example, perhaps there's ways to integrate in the academic programs, various augmented virtual reality training-based programs, simulators, etc.
That could reduce a portion of the on-site experience to make it easier for students to complete those portions of the training. We suggest, recommend that we consider going away from kind of a time bound model into a competency model looking at skills and competencies versus one semester or one year and this could be important for a couple different reasons. 1st, If we consider for example mid-career professionals or transitioning veterans, they may have existing competencies.
In the technical skills needed, but they may not have nuclear background, so their time to be work ready and work proficient in some programs may be may be able to be, you know, shortened based on their existing competencies.
So overall, our goal is to make sure that we can, you know, reduce the time and training to get people, you know, work ready as soon as possible and overall the industry continues to focus on competencies and stackable credentials and the portability of those credentials in order to reduce time to get workers job ready and.
This is particularly important because, as the demand for workers continue to rise, particularly in the US demographics as they shift over the next decade or so.
Is going to be critical that we get quick, that we get our workers trained quickly.
To be job proficient and job ready. So shifting to a more competency focused base, we think would be helpful for that.
So I believe I may have hit my 3 minutes, so I'm going to stop there and thank you for your time today. We appreciate it.
Anita Chan 16:25 Thank you so much.
Sorry, I was remiss in in prompting you to share where you like what organization you're representing.
Lori Brady 16:34 My name is Lori Brady.
I'm the senior director of Human resources from the Nuclear Energy Institute.
Thank you.
Anita Chan 16:41 I see Joel Jenkins.
So you should be able to unmute, yes.
Joel Jenkins 16:49 Yes. Can you hear me? OK.
Yes, I'm Joel Jenkins. I'm a materials engineer on staff with the NRC, specifically the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, and my question is restricted to those trainees that should decide to work at the NRC. Can the NRC offer perspective new trainees any assurance or guarantees that they will be treated fairly during their probationary period? It in that their direct supervision at the NRC will fight for them in their continued employment if they are performing well.Thank you.
Anita Chan 17:33 So I can't field the entirety of that question, but I will start by saying that in the current UNLP, students who receive scholarships and fellowships are considered under a direct hire authority. This traineeship is a subprogram that doesn't necessarily fall under that, but you know, again we are working with OGC in order to interpret the executive order and anything that may impact staff hiring.
Bo, it looks like you may want to.
Bo Pham 18:12
Yeah. I just go back to my statement from earlier on that you know, we're going to as we develop the program, we're going to continue to ensure that we're compliant in compliance with the White House executive orders as well.
Joel Jenkins 18:30 Thank you.
Anita Chan 18:55 Sorry, I see Jason Harris hand up, but I am looking for your name to unmute.
Jason, you should be able to unmute at this time.
Jason Harris 19:18 Thank you. Thank you, Anita and the rest of the NRC staff for holding this important meeting. Again, we appreciate you taking the time to put this together and hear questions and concerns. I'm a professor and director of the Health Physics program at Purdue University. I had a question regarding the traineeship.
Can you provide any insight as to the period of performance and possibly funding?
Level for the traineeship and wondering if this is similar to other traineeships that are coordinated by DOE, NIH and others. Thank you.
Anita Chan 20:01 So within the considerations we are looking at the funding amount. We are probably considering, within the allotted funds that we do have because this is a subprogram that falls under UNLP that is currently allocated at 16,000,000 but includes all of our scholarships, fellowships, faculty and R&D as well. Also, you know we and our C do not have the same funding levels that DOE has in our programs.
So this would be a subset of that currently under consideration would be approximately 2 million for the traineeship subprogram as a whole.
And time consideration has been in alignment to what our current fellowships are in terms of the institutions of higher education and so following along the lines of four years.
Harris, Jason T 21:02 OK. Thank. Thank you.
Anita Chan 21:14 Joy.
Joy, you should be able to unmute yourself.
Joy Jiang - The Breakthrough Institute 21:21 Hello, this is Joy John from the Breakthrough Institute think tank think tank in Washington, DC. First of all, thank you for hosting this informative meeting and my comment is about how you would reach those institutions. Given the solutions that you presented. In the slides, for example, the NRC has not typically reached out to wetland programs and to make this sub trainee program successful and to meet the stated need of the agency and the Congress and all of that to fill the existing workforce gaps in the near term, the program must be proactive instead of passive.
Another two small administrative comments that I have is that if you could attach the slides in ADVANCE in the meeting notice that would be super helpful. And also when you are explaining how this program will be, maybe you can use some examples and try to not use too many terms so that everyone from the public can understand.
So those are all my comments.
Thank you.
Anita Chan 22:53 Thank you the.
The ADAMS accession number should be in the public meeting notice for the slides.
I can go back and verify if you need those as well.
Just to clarify your comment, is there specific language or term that needs clarification that you feel like would be helpful to the public when giving an example.
Joy Jiang - The Breakthrough Institute 23:26 Sure. Let me go back to the slides and take a look one second.
You can take other people's comment 1st and then I will back.
Anita Chan 23:36 OK.
All right.
Well, we'll come back to you all right.
We have Amir Bahadori.
Amir, you should be able to unmute now.
Amir Bahadori 23:54 Hi. Yes, thank you for taking my question.
I'm Amir Bahadori, the nuclear engineering program director at Kansas State University.
I have two brief questions. First, do you envision any restrictions on the specific way that the funds are spent for this program?
And then secondly, do you envision any cost share requirements for this program?
Anita Chan 24:26 So they are still being considered for both of those questions.
So at this point, the restrictions for funding would be limited to students who are participating in the program, but would not be able to fund the actual work experience at the site. Any UNLP funds would need to directly support students who are participating in educational costs.
Similar to our other program requirements, at this point a cost share would not be a requirement. It is a consideration as we look at in the proposals that are received, but it is not a scored criteria in our proposals and it is currently not being considered as a requirement, but certainly something that we can look at as well.
Looks like Joy, are you ready to come back? Sorry.
Joy, if you are ready, you can unmute.
If not, we will move on to Stephen.
Joy Jiang - The Breakthrough Institute 26:08 Hello, can you hear me?
Anita Chan 26:10 Yes.
Joy Jiang - The Breakthrough Institute 26:11 Yeah, this is Joy with the Breakthrough Institute.
Thank you again for letting me jump. Jump up I just double checked and there is no link to the slides under the meeting notice, so you can also double check that because we breakthrough Institute attend a lot of NRC meetings and usually it's there and it's a great resource for us to prepare and understand what the meeting is going on for our own benefit. So if you could make sure that you attach it in the future, that would be very helpful. That's on the that's on the administrative part and then for the terms and jargons and how to make it clearer to the public?
So I quickly go over the slides again and I apologize and I didn't see any specific term that could be very, very hard for the public to understand. I guess my comment would be that for the presentation part you went through very quickly with the slides and it was a little bit unclear for the listeners that what exactly will be done. So, if you could in the future give some, you know examples and maybe you know clarify by a little bit more here and there that would be very helpful.
For example, a lot of listeners have the question about the funding and about the timeline. If you could make 2 separate slides about that, and I know you have a timeline slides already, but if you could make the timeline, the funding and how this program will function more clearer and that would be very helpful for the general public to understand where we are going with this. That is my comment.
Anita Chan 28:16 Mike, did you want to comment?
Mike King 28:21 Yeah. Thanks for the highlighting those two things. I also noticed that myself this morning. So, but just a tip for those listening online, if we inadvertently in the future do not provide the actual hyperlink to the materials and instead just provide the ML number like we did for this one, you can always you know, go into ADAMS and insert that ML number to pull those documents up even if the actual hyperlink to the documents aren't there. That's what I had to do this morning myself.
But we'll endeavor to be a little more diligent there and make it more convenient for stakeholders to do that. I would encourage us to take the time we have remaining in this meeting to go into details on the timeline and any other areas that you think we need to be clear on. That's what this meeting is for.
So, you know, let's explore that a little more detail. If it's unclear to any stakeholders on what's in those slides, let's go ahead and explore it a little more. Thanks.
Anita Chan 29:39 Thanks. We'll go ahead and move on to Stephen who's been waiting.
Joy, if you want to provide further clarification in terms of any timeline or funding amounts we can come back to you.
I have Steven.
Steven Christopher Shannon 30:00 Hi, my name is Steve Shannon. I'm the interim department head for digital engineering at North Carolina State University. This probably goes to some of the material that Mike said we wanted to move towards to get some guidance on these grants would be for educational institutions. Is there any guidance on being able to engage with industry constituents, for example, as partners in the grant? Or is this something that would solely be academic institutions and we would seek out industrial partners, but they wouldn't specifically be called out the grant. And then to that point, I'll also if we do have partners participating, especially in on site activities for traineeships, while with that commitment be allowed to count towards any sort of cost share and then finally on the whole point of cost share, I note that institutions such as higher education institutions such as NC State have probably more capacity for being able to manage cost share than a lot of the institutions you might be targeting. In particular trade schools and community colleges. This something to consider in in the cost share discussion that that that some institutions don't necessarily have the mechanisms for cost share that that, that the that the higher education institutions have. And there's definitely a very strong need in the trades for, for being able to increase the training of workforce needs in that area as well.
Thanks for listening.
Anita Chan 31:49 Thanks. So, to address the first part about the partnerships. So the intention and consideration that we are currently looking at is that the institution would apply for the traineeship, but they would have a substantial partnership already determined with an industry partner. So you would specify that within your proposal.
It would need to be part of that determination. When applying the cost share, again, is not a considered a scoring criteria for our proposals, and I think in consideration of that, you know one of the target areas is that trade school, which doesn't have as
much financial ability to provide that cost share as you said, but you know the limit of with our program is that we are funding university partnerships for students in particular, so that the funding amount that we do provide isn't funding work for partner is funding the educational opportunity for our students. I hope that makes sense.
Steven Christopher Shannon 33:08 That makes perfect sense. Thank you.
Anita Chan 33:12 I see Tim. Tim, you should be able to.
Tim Polich 33:24 Yeah, just a quick comment.
Could you put the ML number for the slides in the chat?
Anita Chan 33:39 So actually I think our chat is disabled, but this is the ML number for the slides.
Tim Polich 34:00 Thank you.
Anita Chan 34:20 Don't see any other hands up.
Joy, if I can provide any additional clarification.
For what you are asking.
You know, please, I think you should still be able to unmute and clarify.
Joy Jiang - The Breakthrough Institute 34:37 Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity. This is joy with the Breakthrough Institute. First, my question is about the timeline. So I was looking at the timeline slides and it seems to me that the timeline. There's two timelines here.
One is about the funding opportunity announcement, which is later this year, 2025, and then the award traineeship will be reviewed December 25 and then awarded by April 2026.
So that's what I can get from this. From this slide, my question is does that mean all the activities of this traineeship program end by April 2026?
Or if not, what is kind of like the long term timeline of this effort.
Anita Chan 35:41 So this is a funding opportunity would fall under our University Nuclear Leadership Program and our grants so this is a kind of an anticipated timeline that follows our grant cycle currently. The initial consideration that we were thinking is that it would follow our educational grants timeline, which would be that the announcement is posted on grants.gov in July 2025. Typically the announcement is available through a few months through September 2025 after that is when all of the grants review cycle happens with the review panels and scoring criteria that takes place. Through all of that process, the recommended awards would be funded in April 2026.
If all of the timeline follows what we currently anticipate, this is a yearly grant cycle.
So it would be the beginning of the award cycle for that program. If we are anticipating that for an institution of higher education that the traineeship is a four year award, it would begin April 2026 and go through 2030 and then we would anticipate given appropriations and continuation of the UNLP program that we would fund this traineeship under UNLP annually.
Joy Jiang - The Breakthrough Institute 37:24 Got it. That's super helpful. Another question is about the program itself. So in your slide, you showed that the traineeship agreement would be required. For students to complete the program and it provides structured training one semester for trade programs and one academic year for IHEs. So does that mean the traineeship so does that mean that a student actually entered this traineeship agreement.
They need one semester for trade programs to accomplish and one academic year.
Anita Chan 38:08 Sorry, I'm just making sure I'm on the right slide. So the current consideration is that the hands on training experience so would be an extended period of time beyond what like an internship would be. An internship may be like 6, 8, 10 weeks on site.
This traineeship would require that a student at a trade school spend at least one semester on site and at some point have one academic year on site if they are attending as part of an undergraduate or graduate degree program, so that does not
necessarily include any required like training workshops or coursework that is part of their educational experience to prepare them for that traineeship, but this would be the consideration for that. Actual time working with the partner in that training experience the traineeship agreement would be a fulfillment of all of the requirements set by the trade, school or institution. In their proposal, if they are proposing specified coursework and workshops in addition to that training time, and then the specified tasks that they will complete at that training. So all of that would be considered part of the traineeship and this traineeship agreement would encompass completion of both the educational and the actual work based training components.
Joy Jiang - The Breakthrough Institute 39:51 Got it. And when you answered Jason's question about the funding, you said probably $2,000,000 for this trainee ship subprogram as a whole. Can I understand?
Approximately $2,000,000 would be the funding for this program.
Anita Chan 40:12 Yes. UNLP is currently authorized at $16,000,000. This includes our research and development grants in addition to the educational grants that we currently fund.
So this would fall within that $16,000,000. So the anticipated would be probably around 2 million.
Joy Jiang - The Breakthrough Institute 40:35 That's very, very helpful.
Thank you for, you know, being patient, answering all my questions.
My final comment would be that.
You know, considering you answered Jason and other people's question, maybe next time ADVANCE Act meeting could be better structured to include those information more clearer in the slides. Another comment is that about this sub traineeship program, how the NRC would advertise it would collaborate with either the trade schools or the Higher Education Institute. Would be a major challenge. Basically, how you implement it and how you make sure that everyone's aware of this opportunity.
Would be very crucial at that point, being proactive and not being passive, waiting for people to dig deeper into this by themselves. That would be my comment. Thank you.
Anita Chan 41:43 Thank you. I just also wanted to further clarify within that funding amount.
Currently we are considering that for a trade school, the individual funding would be approximately $250,000 and then with the other undergraduate or graduate degree programs it would be at $500,000. Those amounts are still under consideration as well, Mike.
42:13 Yeah. So, I think appreciate the feedback. You know, if you have ideas. Of how we could do that outreach. You know, we're, we're all ears. Let's use the time we have in the meeting to offer those up. If you think there's a particular way which we do that outreach to make sure we get the broadest impact and the potential range of people on the receiving end to take advantage of this opportunity, then you know, please share it here.
Now also you know going forward you know for these meetings, I appreciate the feedback of our suggestion that the staff include as much as we can on the slides for the materials. You know there's a lot of discussion that happens to prep for these meetings where we try to anticipate questions in areas of interest. But once these, you know meetings are announced, you know you have a little bit of time.
But once these, you know meetings are announced, you know you have a little bit of.
I'd encourage you to reach out ahead of time if you know there's areas that you want to make sure the staff touch on. And clarify, please don't hesitate go ahead and reach out and, you know, share what your thoughts are on areas you'd like the staff to touch on in advance of. Go ahead and reach out and, you know, share what your thoughts are on areas you'd like the staff to touch on in ADVANCE. We'll try to work those into the slides so that way we're all working together to make sure we get the most out of these opportunities to discuss these. Thanks.
Anita Chan 43:38 Joy, I believe you can still unmute.
Joy Jiang - The Breakthrough Institute 43:42 Thank you so much.
I just want to respond to Mike's answer and I really appreciate that.
I believe what you encourage us to reach out ahead of time and that's a great suggestion and if the NRC can make sure the slides are attached in the meeting announcement, that would also help us to prepare ahead of time regarding the how to. Reach out reach to have a broader impact. I just have a initial thought that the NRC can each out to you know the specific department or the Student Career Center for some trade programs and some IHEs. And then you can have like seminar or like a workshop or like just the question and answer that can be virtual or it can be on site. And then the students will know about this issue.
So that's just the initial thought, but we can certainly brainstorm this together, Mike in the future.
Thank you again for your respond.
Anita Chan 45:07 Thank you.
I just want to make sure that you had the public meeting notice and slides ml as well, so it is in there currently and we can just make sure that the link is active to the actual ADAMS page.
Thank you for the comments and suggestions for outreach as well. We will definitely take those into consideration. As we are establishing the traineeship., it is a new program so we want to make sure that we are reaching out, potentially to all of the organizations that can really ADVANCE the workforce.
I do not see any additional hands at this time. So if we do not have any additional comments. I think we are ready to close? We are a few minutes early.
Alright, I see Rizwan, let me unmute you. Alright Rizwan, you can unmute yourself.
Rizwan Uddin 46:14 Yeah. Hi, thanks. Thanks, Anita. And apologies if I missed this part of this was already covered. Will there be an expected return for from the person who gets the money?
Anita Chan 46:32 Just to clarify is it is your question, will they have a service obligation as similar to the service agreement now, OK, so, so right now under consideration is not a service obligation, the obligation would be the traineeship completion, and the obligation would be a traineeship agreement.
Uddin, Rizwan 46:42 Yep, correct.
Anita Chan 46:56 They complete the program in its entirety.
Uddin, Rizwan 47:00 OK, wonderful one.
One other question, will it be possible for students at IHE to be able to do the traineeship entirely at the institution, meaning that at the educational solution and not have to spend time at industry partner?
Anita Chan 47:21 So that is something that we are still considering. It has been a question that has been brought up as well. One of the considerations as part of that is if students are completing the traineeship at the university, it may be, you know under their research and development grants that we have. The intention is really to partner with the industry and to advance the workforce in that way, outside of just academia.
So that is something that we can definitely take back and consider in our discussions and clarifying.
Uddin, Rizwan 48:01 I mean I'm. I'm sure you realize that the consideration there is that the potential pool of applicants is probably going to drop if they have to, because the time to graduation might increase if they have to go and spend it, you know, a semester or a whole year at industry, it is like doing a co-op and we have traditionally had very small number of students actually looking for that opportunity.
Anita Chan 48:29 Thank you. We'll take that feedback into consideration.
Uddin, Rizwan 48:37 Thank you.
Anita Chan 48:42 Right. I do not see any additional hands for comments. Bo, are you?
Available.
Bo Pham 48:49 Again, I'd just like to thank you everyone for your attendance tuning in and also providing the comments. Certainly. You know we hear that that the feedback regarding you know how we advertise and provide the information on this meeting, we can always do better, and we will strive to do so. But I really appreciate the specific comments that we need to consider in terms of implementing the programs.
You know, the last ones I heard from Brisbane, so I appreciate that. As I close, I would say that the staff will take into consideration the comments that we got from the meetings today and then we'll look forward to kind of try to stick as close as we can to the timeline. While adhering to other compliance with executive orders on going as well. OK. Thank you for your attendance.
Anita Chan 49:47 Thank you. And if there's any additional questions or comments, as Mike King shared earlier, you are always welcome to contact us through the ADVANCE Act site as well if there's any additional considerations that weren't shared today. Thank you.
Have a great rest of your morning.