Training industry chemists

At the BASF headquarters in Ludwigshafen, Germany, about 2,300 apprentices are taking their first steps into a chemistry career. If previous years are a guide, 90% of them will become permanent employees with the company after completing their apprenticeships.

BASF has been training apprentices for more than 100 years. The chemical giant says it relies on in-company training to attract new talent and keep its lab benches filled. “[The] training is a key success factor and at the heart of creating motivated, qualified, and committed employees,” says Philipp Roßkopf, a BASF spokesperson. “Apprenticeship programs build a talent pipeline for roles that are vital to the success and sustainability of our industry.”

Apprenticeship programs like BASF’s are among the most common forms of training young talent in Germany, where about 50% of all high school graduates undergo vocational training provided by companies. Apprenticeships in Germany are known under the umbrella term dual vocational training, and they combine practical, on-the-job training with more traditional education at a school.

Germany’s chemical industry swears by apprenticeships for feeding its pipeline of talent. For aspiring chemists, they provide a route to a science career that allows them to earn money while completing their training. Now the model is expanding across mainland Europe, to the UK, and even to the US, as chemical companies are embracing apprentices as a way to get the skills they need and attract aspiring chemists from different backgrounds and with a diverse range of talents.

Credit: Evonik Industries

Evonik Industries trains about 1,000 apprentices at any one time to work at its facilities.

“These are great schemes for young students who want work experience and to continue learning but without the debt at the end,” says Michelle Lippiatt, human resources manager at Afton Chemical UK. “And they are a great way for businesses to get new, young talent through the door.”

In Ludwigshafen, apprentices are trained in BASF’s dedicated training campus—which has training production plants, laboratories, and workshops—by the company’s own instructors, as well as in the production facilities by BASF employees. In parallel, they go to a vocational school for classes. BASF is training apprentices in 30 professions. “Currently, we are looking for chemical technicians as well as specialists in technical professions—in particular, electronics technicians for automation technology or operating engineering, mechatronics technicians, and plant or industrial mechanics,” Roßkopf says.

A program that trains thousands of young people is something only large companies can afford, says Hans Jürgen Metternich, head of product line apprenticeship and idea management at the German specialty chemical company Evonik Industries. The company trains about 1,000 apprentices at any one time to work at its facilities. And that number is growing. “This year Evonik added 110 positions for apprentices in the chemical sciences and maintenance,” Metternich says.

But Evonik also recognizes that some companies cannot afford similar infrastructure. “Small companies can struggle to do the training themselves. The curricula are very demanding,” Metternich says. For more than 20 years, Evonik has been offering smaller companies the opportunity to train apprentices at Evonik’s training centers. The apprentices are employed by the other companies but are trained by Evonik’s dedicated training staff and sometimes work at the chemical giant’s labs over the 3-to-4-year apprenticeship program.

Metternich says the popularity of Evonik’s training centers—the company is currently training about 500 apprentices for other companies—mirrors the demand for apprentices across Germany’s chemical industry. For Evonik, training the future staff of its competitors means it is less likely to compete for more experienced staff later on, he says. Some 9,000 new apprentices are trained each year in the German chemical industry overall, Metternich says, and that number is likely to rise.

While the dual vocational system began in Germany, it is beginning to find a footing elsewhere in Europe. Austria and Switzerland already have similar systems. This year Lonza accepted 84 apprentices at its site in Visp, Switzerland. This is the most new trainees it has taken on to date, according to site manager Renzo Cicillini. “We continue to see increasing demand for apprenticeships from young people,” he says. There are now more than 230 apprentices being trained at the Visp site.

And German companies are spreading their apprenticeship programs to sites abroad. Evonik is beginning to integrate an apprenticeship program into its site in Antwerp, Belgium. And BASF has taken its apprenticeship program to the US. The company is currently training 100 apprentices at 20 manufacturing sites spread across the country, and BASF says it plans to expand the program further.

“In the US, apprenticeship programs like BASF’s are less common than in Europe,” Roßkopf says. “But the labor market in the US is tight, and the demand for skilled workers remains high.” Apprenticeships lower barriers to entry for high-demand chemistry careers and help address the skill gap in the manufacturing industry, Roßkopf says.

In the UK, apprenticeship programs have also experienced an uptick over the past decade, powered in part by the rising cost of university tuition fees, says Lippiatt, the human resources manager at Afton Chemical UK. The additives manufacturer has been running apprenticeship programs since the 1990s, and 75% of previous apprentices have secured permanent positions with the company. Some are now even in senior leadership roles and at the director level, Lippiatt says. This year, Afton is seeking four technician-scientist apprentices.

Lippiatt compares apprenticeships to a 2-to-3-year interview for both the individual and the company. “And it’s a great opportunity for them to come into an organization where they do not need previous experience—they just need a keen interest in science and a willingness to learn,” she says. Afton’s apprenticeship program helps the company get a steady flow of new talent through the door. And the company sees apprenticeships as a way to encourage young people into science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers, she says. “We want to help develop the next generation of scientists.”

The UK’s apprenticeship system is different from Germany’s dual vocational training. UK companies collaborate with a training provider—such as a university, vocational school, or college—to run an apprenticeship program, rather than industry itself taking the lead. Depending on the program, apprentices work toward various educational qualifications, including requirements to graduate from high school, a combined academic-and-​vocational foundation degree, or a bachelor’s or master’s degree. The difference from being a full-time high school or undergraduate student? Apprentices earn while they learn.

Contract development and manufacturing organization Almac Group has been running an apprenticeship program with the Southern Regional College (SRC), Portadown Campus, since 2016. The company set up the program at its headquarters in Craigavon, Northern Ireland, to recruit and retain staff and to help young people in its communities find employment, says Frances Weldon, Almac’s STEM outreach manager. In May, Almac launched another program in conjunction with Ulster University.

Almac’s number of new apprentices grows every year. Its partnership with SRC has trained 52 apprentices since 2016, three-quarters of whom are still working for the company. “By the end of 2025, we aim to have trained over 100 apprentices in partnership with SRC and Ulster University,” Weldon says. Normally, Almac’s apprentices finish the program with a foundation degree from SRC. Weldon says 85% then progress to a bachelor’s of science degree.

Credit: AstraZeneca

AstraZeneca has been running an apprenticeship program for more than 40 years.

For many aspiring chemists, the apprenticeship system opens a door to a career in the sciences that would otherwise be unattainable, says Katie Dryden-Holt, interim vocational skills program manager at the UK’s Royal Society of Chemistry. “Apprenticeships enable somebody to gain degree-level qualifications without amassing debt,” she adds. “They open up a fantastic asset to our science community that we would otherwise lose.”

The benefits of an apprenticeship are huge, Dryden-Holt says. Schools try to teach the application of theory, but they can’t teach the professional skills that people learn on the job, she says.

Besides, apprentices gain valuable life skills, Dryden-Holt explains. They have ownership and accountability of projects, learn how to interact with a team and network in a corporate landscape, and find a balance between completing studies and having a full-time job.

The Royal Society of Chemistry is trying to raise awareness of vocational pathways into the chemical sciences through evaluating and accrediting programs and collaborating with colleges to get the word out. “There is a preconception in the UK that apprenticeships are for certain jobs,” such as plumbing, plastering, and electrician trades, Dryden-Holt says. “I don’t think people are aware of them as a route into the sciences.”

For those interested in chemistry, schools in the UK still push the traditional university route, says Kim Hardman, director of apprenticeships for the UK at AstraZeneca. The drugmaker, which has apprentices at all five of its UK sites, is running its own awareness campaigns to bring schools and parents on board with apprenticeships. “Not everybody knows what an apprenticeship is,” Hardman says. Often, she adds, parents are amazed to learn that it can be a way for their children to gain a degree while earning a salary. Apprentices earn at least the national minimum wage, but their pay varies widely depending on the company that employs them and the country they are in.

Despite the relative obscurity of apprenticeships, AstraZeneca does not have to hunt for new apprentices, Hardman says: “They come to us in droves. We’ve seen a significant increase in the number of applications that we are receiving.” AstraZeneca has been running an apprenticeship program for more than 40 years. Currently, the drugmaker is training 127 apprentices in the UK, 24 of these in science positions.

Some aspiring chemists are more excited by coming directly into a scientific organization that is developing lifesaving medicine, and working in the lab from day 1, than by starting at a university, Hardman says. For AstraZeneca, apprentices bring diversity to the workforce, she says. They might come from different financial backgrounds than most university graduates, as well as have different talents and motivations they bring to the job. Apprentices are keen to get started in the working world and to continue their education, Hardman says. “I think what that brings is a different and really exciting option to develop a pipeline of talent.”

At the end of the program, Astra​Zeneca’s apprentices graduate with 4 years of work experience, Hardman says. Over the past 2 years, 100% of graduating apprentices have become full-time employees. “When we bring them in, we don’t guarantee them a job, [but] it’s very unusual for an apprentice not to stay with us at the end,” Hardman says. “They have developed the skills to be part of the team and are really valuable to us as a business. We have people in the business now who started as our apprentices more than 40 years ago. ”

Vanessa Zainzinger is a freelance writer who covers the chemical industry.

Tracy Ludwick Naputi was a soon-to-be-divorced mother of five managing a McDonald’s restaurant when she realized something had to change. Ludwick Naputi loved science in high school, but the only science-related career she could envision back then was nursing, which turned out to be a bad fit. As she puts it, “Life happened”—and she found herself struggling to support her family and ready for new options.

Then Ludwick Naputi received a flyer from San Diego Miramar College, one of three schools in the region’s community college network, about programs preparing people for biotechnology-related jobs. She decided to enroll. That was in 2005—and it was the beginning of Ludwick Naputi’s journey toward a career she loves.

Today, Ludwick Naputi is making a comfortable salary as a research associate at BioLegend, a company that makes and sells immunoassay kits to scientists. Her position, which involves troubleshooting kits, has lots of room for growth. And her kids are proud of her: when they were young, they would tell their friends and teachers that their mom was a chemist. “I was that displaced single mother who had all kinds of barriers in my way,” she says. “Doing the program at Miramar College opened so many doors for me.”

Increasingly, community colleges like Miramar are forging partnerships with regional companies to support careers in fields such as biotechnology, chemical processing and manufacturing, and the petroleum industry. Community college programs have become an indispensable component of workforce training, whether it is for high school students exploring possibilities, career changers launching themselves into the technology sector, or PhD-level scientists looking to gain specific skills.

The need for workers—both with and without a bachelor’s degree—is on a steady upswing, particularly after the workforce disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Community colleges’ role training workers has become more important as the cost of higher education has soared. There are close to 1,000 community colleges in the US, and more than half of all graduates with bachelor’s degrees have attended one, according to the American Association of Community Colleges. In addition, about a third of all jobs in the US require some sort of training besides a 4-year college degree, according to a survey by Opportunity America, a think tank that promotes economic mobility. And community colleges have been key to providing it.

At Delaware Technical Community College, for example, students who go through its training programs for chemical process operators have a 100% job placement rate, says Katherine Lakofsky, the school’s director of workforce development and community education. “The industry need is still growing,” Lakofsky says. The program aims to put students on a long-term path toward fulfilling work in chemistry-related fields. “We are careful to use the word career, and not job, and we’re partnering with our industry partners to let us showcase what they offer.”

One of Delaware Tech’s signature programs, which has been running since 1999, trains chemical process operators to work in the chemical, petroleum refining, polymer, and pharmaceutical industries. The certificate, which takes two or three semesters to complete and consists of seven courses, is generally enough for an entry-level job as a chemical operator, says Lakshmi Cyr, the instructional director for the science department at Delaware Tech’s Stanton campus. Coursework includes general chemistry, computer training, and an introduction to the safety protocols and equipment that chemical process operators encounter. Some students continue to a more in-depth diploma track or to a 2-year associate’s degree.

That was the situation for Mark Jackson, who got his degree in December 2020. As part of the program, he interned at PBF Energy’s Delaware City Refining Company, which manufactures light and heavy gas oil, diesel fuel, propane, and other substances from crude oil. Now he works there full-time on the coker, a setup that recovers usable elements from material left over in the refinery process. He plans to stay as long as he can continue to advance at the company.

Unlike Ludwick Naputi, who had little experience in science when she came to Miramar, Jackson already had a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. But he had trouble finding a well-paying chemistry-related job. Because he already knew the basics, he was able to finish the associate’s degree in three semesters. The program’s focus on hands-on experience with processing equipment and on troubleshooting were key, Jackson points out. “Before, I was making like $24 an hour, with no benefits,” he says. “Now I’m making more than double that, with benefits and additional perks such as a 401(k).”

Credit: BioLegend

San Diego Miramar College's training program can launch students like Tracy Ludwick Naputi into well-paying careers in the biotechnology industry.

Jackson’s 4-year degree isn’t the norm for the field, says James Fields, a training supervisor at the refinery. “Most of our operators do not have degrees of any type,” he explains, but “folks coming through the [Delaware Tech] program have pretty good knowledge of how the control systems work and the instrumentation, whereas folks off the street are not necessarily up to speed on that.”

Another example is Montgomery College in Maryland, which provides training for people who want to work in the biotechnology industry. “Because so much time is spent in the lab, the experience people get here is one you would not find at a lot of 4-year institutions,” says Mark Nardone, Montgomery College’s biotechnology program manager. The school runs certificate and associate’s degree programs in biotechnology and biomanufacturing, a college-​level program for high school students, and boot camps—some free through funding from the state of Maryland—for career changers.

One of Nardone’s top priorities is to make sure the training equipment is state of the art, he says. People from major universities and companies like AstraZeneca, which has sites in nearby Gaithersburg and Frederick, Maryland, “come in and they look around and go, ‘Mark, we don’t have this,’ and I smile, and go, ‘I know.’ ”

Nardone estimates that more than 350 people have completed the certificate and associate’s degree programs and are now working in the biopharmaceutical industry in Maryland. “We are giving them a foundation for entry-level biopharma,” he says. “When a student leaves here after 2 years, when they go to AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, BioReliance, or any of the other pharmas in the area, [the companies] know the level of expertise that has been taught here.”

Both Delaware Tech and Montgomery College occasionally work directly with companies to create programs tailored to meet specific training needs. Companies sometimes even use these programs to outsource some core training that entry-​level employees would normally get on-site. In other cases, industry provides input more indirectly to ensure that community college programs provide broader training—and value—for job seekers than if a company trained workers itself. Career education programs generally have an advisory board, and most programs tap local industry leaders and program alumni to keep them abreast of changing needs. These conversations often lead to concrete changes that equip students with desirable skills as technology evolves.

Credit: Cherie Roberts/Delaware Technical Community College

Students at Delaware Technical Community College get hands-on training in many types of chemical processing instrumentation. Faculty Heather Bashford (left) and Donna Hummel examine this batch distillation process unit.

“We are always trying to figure out ways to incorporate a piece of curriculum or add a course to ride the wave that industry is encouraging us to consider,” says professor Rebecca Bowers-Gentry, who leads Miramar’s biotechnology program.

Ludwick Naputi has gotten the chance to see the evolution of Miramar’s program firsthand. When she started, the program was in its early days, she recalls, and instructors were creating curricula by finding protocols for the class’s experiments online. Now they have all the latest equipment that biotechnology companies use.“The technology itself has improved so much since then,” she says.

Miramar’s program has a strong chemistry and biology foundation. It takes students through basics such as pipetting, solution making and dilutions, and ­molecular techniques such as Western blots, DNA isolation and analysis, polymerase chain reaction, CRISPR, and bacterial cell culture. “Our capstone content is in mammalian cell culture,” Bowers-​ Gentry explains.

But just as crucial is the program’s focus on building soft skills. The faculty brings in speakers and organizes group visits to local companies. It also provides extensive training with things like résumé writing, interviewing, and public speaking. Ludwick Naputi says her instructors convinced her to go on practice interviews, and to her surprise, one of the interviews led to a job offer. She left the program with two certificates in 2011, and this fall she is returning to finish her associate’s degree, along with working toward an online bachelor’s degree at California State University, Sacramento. For Ludwick Naputi, who landed her current job last year, those soft skills have made all the difference to her success. “The presentations they made us do—that was my least favorite part of class,” she says. “But a majority of my job right now is presenting my data to executives.”

But the biggest value of the program, in her experience, is the investment she feels it made in her. “To this day, the biotech staff are still here for support, encouraging me and supporting me and giving me references if I needed them,” she says. “Without them, I would not be as far along as I am today.”

Alla Katsnelson is a freelance writer. With additional reporting by freelance writer Celia Arnaud.