Protecting and restoring the Louisiana coast is an ongoing task which requires a trained workforce.

I think that younger generation is going to hyperfocus on it as we get more in line with climate change.

They're going to be a key workforce piece to that, whether they're working on the wind, the solar or the dredge.

They help kind of put coastal Louisiana back together.

Not only are they doing the science, but we're also exposing them to the history and the culture and the historical maps.

So they realize how how devastating the coastal changes have become, but also prepare them for careers in the future.

Engineering in general and STEM is where we should be looking.

But then within that, I think these fields of water management and engineering as well as energy transition are going to be places that are going to be growth sectors for decades to come.

And you can do it from Louisiana.

So how are we preparing the next generation for career opportunities and climate science, renewable energy and coastal restoration?

Coming up in Challenges and Opportunities: The Future for the Louisiana Coast.

Hello, I'm Marcia Kavanaugh and thanks for joining us as we continue our series about the Louisiana coast.

This time we will explore the opportunities that are offered by various educational programs in our area to prepare the workforce that's needed for the ongoing challenge of protecting and restoring our coast.

And joining me here in the studio are two experts who are very, very familiar with the need for training our future scientist and engineers.

Bren Haase, the director of the Barataria Terrebonne National Estuary Program and the former executive director of the state's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.

And also Doctor Calvin Mackie, who is the founder of STEM NOLA, a nationally recognized program to advance STEM education in grades K through 12.

Thanks so much for joining us, guys.

This is a really such an important, important conversation that we're going to have today because we really do need to get our next generation ready in the science fields and particularly as it is related to our coast.

So Bren, let me go to you first.

BTNEP, Barataria Terrebonne National Estuary Program.

Tell us a little bit about that.

Absolutely.

So the Barataria Terrebonne National Estuary Program is one of 28 such programs around the country that recognize and whose missions are really to preserve and restore estuaries of national significance.

I'm a little biased, but I would argue that perhaps our estuary here is as significant as any other in the nation of course and so this this organization is set up as a federal state partnership, to do just what I said to help restore and preserve, the Barataria Terrebonne estuary.

Now, of course, you're with the state for a long time and as executive director of CPRA, Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, so if you could sort of generally right now, give us an idea of, you know, what is the state doing in terms of protecting our coast, what sort of projects out there, what are people going to do What do we need people to work at to protect our coast?

Yeah, well, the state's coastal program has been evolving and growing tremendously really for the last 30 years or so.

Just over the last 15 years or so it's gone from a program that was in the tens of millions of dollars to something that's pushing close to $2 billion annually that the states are implementing number of projects that are in the hundreds of millions of dollars range.

And that that can, those kinds of projects can range from everything from dredging projects to build marshes, barrier islands, ridges along our coast, to risk reduction projects like floodwalls, levees, things like that.

And we're going to need people to do that work.

And Calvin, that's where you come in in your group, STEM NOLA, tell us a bit about that.

STEM NOLAs a nonprofit first and foremost thank you for having me.

Absolutely.

STEM NOLA is a nonprofit my wife and I started over ten years ago to expose, inspire and engage the community in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

We believe that the workforce of the future and the jobs of the future, we must start upskilling our kids from the cradle, we say cradle to career, and introducing them into the possibilities.

And so, you know, as it relates to what our needs are here, you know, how much do we need to train our future generation to do these kinds of work, these kinds of jobs that are needed to protect our coast?

You know, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I was on the Louisiana Recovery Authority, and I had the opportunity to visit the Netherlands.

And I met middle schoolers who had the language and the smarts about the environment better than most of the people we were that was traveling together.

And I said, never again should our children grow up in a community and not know the challenges, but also the opportunities within those challenges.

And that's where we are in the state of Louisiana with climate change, sea rise, coastal restoration, I mean, the careers of the future are right here before us, but we have to make sure our kids are aware of it and make sure they know the pathway to get there.

And a foundation for all of these jobs is pretty much science, technology, engineering and math.

And that's, you know, a real big part of it to make sure that the kids, but also their parents, their families, know what opportunities are out there to train our future generations.

So we are going to get deeper into this important conversation.

But first, let's take a look at some of the programs that are offered by area universities and community colleges to prepare those who want to pursue a career in the coastal and environmental arena.

We imagine our students are going to be right there at the interaction between sort of like civilization and nature.

Dr. Gary LaFleur, professor of Biological Sciences at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, sees his students playing a big role in the future of the Louisiana coast.

It's not that we're going to lose the coast.

We're always going to have human beings using the coast and so rather than moving far away, I think Nicholls students can be the ones to figure out how to develop a place that would be more resistant to hurricanes or how to make a town or how to make a base of action that will do okay with sea level rise.

I think that our students are going to be coming up with the next generation of ideas, next 50 years.

And to prepare students for that important task the university has created a new coastal center.

We have a diversity of programs that participate in studies relevant to the coast.

Unlike us here today, who grew up along the bayous and who saw the change over the course of our lifetime, students don't necessarily have that perspective, so we have to help them.

Delete this Addressing the coast is is no doubt an intergenerational phenomenon.

And that's why we pride ourselves in educating the next generation of scientists and engineers.

So we're building a coastal center and the building will be a nexus for coastal agencies and coastal education.

It's going to contain 10,000 plus square foot of laboratories for scientists and engineers to solve coastal issues.

There'll be an area for coastal agencies to be resident and to interact with our students and the scientists.

So it's an incredible idea, a very forward thinking idea to place this on the Nicholls campus.

We are closest to the coast.

When we began our tenure as a junior college in 1948, you could take a diagonal between Thibodaux, where Nicholls is, and the nearest coastline and it was 50 miles.

Today the nearest coastline is 24 miles.

That's 75 years.

So that's pretty dramatic.

Generations of our students have been invested in coastal life and coastal communities.

What better place to generate a new invested generation of scientists and engineers and historians and sociologists than right here?

Louisiana needs our students, the next generation to help fix some of the problems that some of our work has done in the past.

I mean, some of these were innocent mistakes, but there's a lot of problems to solve.

So they have their work cut out for them.

Lafourche Parish President Archie Chaisson adds that tomorrow's workforce needs to be multifaceted.

We're seeing things like the Coastal Center being built on campus at Nicholls State University as a tremendous driver of research and how we can do things better.

We're finding a new potential in artificial intelligence and how do we use the A.I.

culture as a way to get more benefits to the coast.

Part of that coastal center at Nicholls State University is going to be a supercomputer that's going to help us do a whole lot of things, whether it's looking at how we build levees better, how do we build marsh creation stuff better.

And the more we do that, the more we can draw here, because the more you induce that private investment, the more workforce you create, the more jobs you create that may be tied to the coastal world, whether it's actually dredging and moving that material with an excavator or whether it's working on that supercomputer and using the A.I.

to help us do some of this research capabilities.

But it's beyond that.

It's the people who are going to design it, but the people also need to implement it.

We need to have people who know how to operate the vessels, right, whether they're the big offshore vessels that are going offshore to work on some potential offshore wind in the Gulf of Mexico, or whether it's the brown water side, the guys who are running tugs, who are pushing some of these barges and some of these dredges with the equipment operations on them to actually move material and move sediment to actually rebuild our coast.

But it's beyond that.

It's the diesel mechanics who are working on some of these boats.

It's the electricians who are coming off that could potentially work on some of the turbines and the solar products that we see in the state's climate, climate initiative, right.

And it's all of that.

And it's what we talk about in coastal Louisiana is not a transition away from oil and gas production.

It's in addition to oil and gas production.

So the workforce needs to be a well-rounded workforce.

We're going to see the economies change.

I think we're going to see our industries change because we're all going to have to adapt.

Hopefully most of us adapt or all of us adapt in the right way and we're still sitting here talking in 50 years.

The head of the economic development organization GNO Inc., Michael Hecht, sees growth opportunities and career paths in coastal and energy changes.

The fact is that here in Louisiana, we are better positioned because of past experience in energy, because of geology, because of infrastructure.

When I look at what's happening in water management and then look at what's happening in energy transition, to me, those are closely related and sometimes are actually one in the same industry and the same engineering firms that are doing both.

To give a very simple example, the same skills, the same assets, same infrastructure that you use to build and service an oil rig, you can use to engineer, build and service a wind turbine.

In order for the companies to locate here and grow, they're going to need a quantity and quality of workforce.

But second, if we are not creating jobs and making sure that Louisianians get these jobs, then to some degree, our history of being economically colonized will continue.

I think it comes down to from the earliest days, having our young people socialized and educated into the idea that we can live with water, we can create energy in a more responsible way.

Education has to continue in K-12 through STEM education.

Engineering and math really are the two key bases of this.

Then we get to our two-year schools, for example, at Nunez, where there now is a program in partnership with a Norwegian company to teach people how to be wind turbine technicians or could be a program at Delgado for urban water management.

Then you get to our four-year schools.

You can have more sophisticated engineering degrees like we have at Xavier and Dillard and UNO and LSU.

They're going to be growth sectors for decades to come.

And you can do it from Louisiana.

All right.

So in the state, if somebody is interested in pursuing this career path, there are different places to go to learn about it.

What are we doing, though, in K through 12?

I know that's what you are really focused on right now, right?

Right.

We're focused on out of school time and in school time.

In school time is primarily, the theory.

I mean, people present, you know, the science and the math of what's happening, what we try to do in out of school time, and also by supporting in-school education, is to bring the hands on application, whether it's dredging or whether it's, big data, whether it's coastal restoration.

The kids have to understand what that means.

So we have kids building levees and using sponges as the wetlands and show how to how to sponge or the wetlands, stop the surge of the water.

We have them operating remote control excavators and things like that, because that's the type of tools and equipment.

We have a buoyancy and density day where they learn about buoyancy and build their own boats, because boats are going to play a large role in energy transition and coastal restoration.

Everything we're talking about, these are the jobs of the future.

And our kids have to not only learn the theory behind it, but they have to have the application when they touch it.

We believe that hands on mean minds on.

I just read a report from Georgetown Center for Education and Workforce and they said good jobs is where you can have a middle class lifestyle.

By 2031, 85 percent of all jobs are going to require some post-secondary education.

And I say that to say over 50 percent of jobs that we consider STEM jobs, you can get with a certification or a two-year degree from a community college like Nunez, Delgado or Fletcher.

So our state is well poised to develop the workforce of the future in terms of what we're offering in school and out of school.

We just have to make sure that the community and the parents are aware such that we can drive our children to those opportunities.

So the possibilities are there.

We just have to make sure that people are aware of it.

And Bren, you know, certainly being with the state as you were for so long, you've seen what the personnel is, what the personnel needs are.

So anybody who's maybe thinking about getting into this field, what kind of jobs do you see that they could perhaps get?

Yeah.

So it really runs the gamut of just about any kind of job you could, you can think of.

I would certainly agree with Dr. Mackie that, you know, the science and engineering really is at the core of the state's coastal restoration program.

And some of the things that we're doing at BTNEP, landscape architects, attorneys, accountants, operators of equipment, vessel operators, all of those kind of jobs that run the gamut from some of the most technical to, you know, some more of the sort of skilled labor type jobs are required to get this mission accomplished.

It's an all hands on deck thing.

And also at BTNEP, you guys have a direct education program, too.

I mean, you have education offerings and lesson plans, etc.

And I know that you guys do a lot of outreach or just direct outreach where you you have different events and programs where you can literally educate the community around you to get involved with stuff.

So tell us more about that.

Absolutely.

So we do some sort of direct education things related to schoolchildren K through 12 in terms of curriculum development and materials that can range from coastal themes, sticker books for very, very young children, maybe kindergarten, first grade to other curriculum activities for folks that are in, you know, higher, higher grade levels.

But a large part of what we do as well is, is outreach to more of the general public.

So we've had partnerships with the French Quarter Fest and here in New Orleans, of course, through the Rougaroo Fest in Houma, we table a lot of other events across the coast and across the estuary here, just to make people aware that, I mean, you'd be surprised at how many people you run into in the French Quarter Fest that don't understand that New Orleans is a coastal city and unfortunately getting more coastal by the minute.

You know, the state also is looking into developing as an industry, renewable energy sources, and that certainly is another sector where we're going to need personnel in there.

So what do you see we're doing to help train people to get into that?

We start talking about energy transition, the entire nation is really undergoing energy transition.

We're talking about wind power, hydrogen, carbon sequestration, carbon capture and things like that.

So what the state is trying to do is look at the assets that we have now and see how those assets can support this energy transition.

And that's why it's so very important for us to understand that the workforce that we have now have skills.

Louisiana is, you know, is set to participate in the energy transition, unlike most other states are not because we have the infrastructure that we can transform to go into wind, hydrogen and carbon sequestration.

Are we ready to do that?

I mean, are we psychologically ready to do that, do you think?

Well, that's the work I'm doing.

I don't think we are psychologically there.

But the work that BTNEP is doing work, that STEM NOLA is doing is to bring awareness to the community because with energy transition, this is going to be the first time in the United States where you're going to have an economic transition that won't be dependent upon economics.

It's going to be dependent upon policy.

And it is going to be dependent upon policy.

That means you have to have the people behind the policy.

You can't have the people afraid of the technology, don't have the mindset to accept the technology because the policy won't get them.

That's why we have to bring the people along with us.

So the big energy companies, they've been here, you know, for oil and gas, are they looking at us also for this renewable energy field?

Do they see a place for Louisiana in that, would you say?

Yeah, I believe the answer to that is absolutely yes.

I think that, you know, we often talk about the energy transition.

I've heard a few people coined the phrase energy addition.

It's not necessarily a backing away from some of the more traditional energy sources, although some people believe that's the way we need to go.

But regardless of what happens, we're going to need more energy in the future.

Right.

And so an all of the above approach, all hands on deck approach, I think is the wise one.

And certainly hedges our future as we look towards increased energy needs in the future.

When you start thinking about things like AI and other things that are way more energy intensive than than sort of our activities require today.

You know, another thing that I hear a lot about is water management and how to live with water.

We are surrounded by water, so that's another field.

Yet another field.

My Ph.D. in fluid mechanics.

So water management, water flow control will be huge for the next 100 years.

A matter of fact, the master plan that CPRA put out is a 50 year, $1,000,000,000 a year plan.

So we have to prepare our kids for that workforce for the next for the next 50 to 100 years.

And water will be at the center.

As a matter of fact, one of the grand challenges in this world when we start talking about engineering is water and people battle over water and how are we going to take care of people and make sure people can get the water that they need.

And of course, at BTNEP, water quality is a really big part of what you do.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

A big part of our program is, in fact, making sure that we can preserve and improve the water quality in the basin.

Of course, as as water quality goes, so goes the quality of life and everything else that's in the estuary.

So we've got some various programs that involve not just monitoring water quality, but also assisting homeowners and improving septic and accessibility to sewage treatment systems and things of that nature that have been very successful.

I was just in a parish here yesterday, in fact, and we're looking to expand that into more than right now, which is what's just in Lafourche Parish and perhaps Terrebonne, St Mary and some other parishes as well.

So basically we're just talking about change, changing environment and then how it's changing our lives.

You guys both work a lot with younger folks.

Are you finding that there is a concern and an awareness that is growing among the younger generation about what we're our climate needs are?

Where we in the last ten years we've engaged over 160,000 young people.

We have big events across the state now where we have events on water quality, flood protection and upward of 200 kids registered at a time.

There's a thirst in the community amongst our young people for the knowledge that they're going to need for the 21st century.

They want to understand the world around them and they see the flooding, they see the rain.

You know, they're really into the environment and they want to know what is it that I can do, one to save myself?

What do you find?

I would agree.

Yeah.

I think the awareness today is as high as it's ever been.

Does it need to be better?

I think the answer to that question is yes as well.

But there are so many outlets and sources of information available to folks today, particularly young folks today, that weren't available to me, for example.

And so, yeah, I think the awareness and an understanding is better than it's ever been.

I don't think it's where we need to be.

However, I think it needs to be improved through systems like the one that the doctor, Dr. Mackie is involved with So we have to keep making people aware and making younger folks aware of how they could indeed make these fields that we've just been talking about a career path.

It is a reasonable thing and they can earn a good living at it.

Senator Cassidy just awarded STEM NOLA $3 million to replicate what we're doing all across all across this state.

And the reason was because he understands STEM for all, its got to be all kids.

You have to be all communities.

And we don't know what a genius existed in our state or what kids are going to come up with the solutions to these problems.

So we have to go into every community and expose all our children so that we can have the workforce for the 21st century.

Okay.

And that's something that we certainly are going to try to do.

And, you know, as we were just talking about, there are many college level coastal programs in our area.

And there's also one to teach the teachers.

And so the Mississippi River Delta Institute held each summer by the Meraux Foundation in St. Bernard Parish.

WYES contributor Tom Gregory has more about that.

The Mississippi River is a dynamic force.

Shaping the landscape.

Our lives and even how we learn about this vital ecosystem.

It's like drinking out of a fire hydrant.

There's so much to learn about this environment.

It's so interesting and complex that people are blown away by the opportunity.

Raise your hand if you're a canoe steering expert.

The Mississippi River Delta Institute, a partnership between Hamlin University's Center for Global Environmental Education in Saint Paul and the Meraux Foundation in St. Bernard Parish in Louisiana, is an immersive learning experience for teachers.

A chance for educators to get out and engage in the environment, to learn the sense of place, and then be able to come back and share that with their students.

So during these three or four days, they are actually learners and they are asked to put aside their teacher hat and to celebrate learning once again.

You see this growing.

You know.

It's an opportunity for educators to take a deep dive into America's river.

A lot of folks don't quite understand the role the Mississippi River plays in the health and commerce of this great country.

We are connected to it whether we want to or not.

This connection is the curriculum of the institute.

We've got folks in Hawaii, we've got folks from Minnesota, folks from around the country are, have come to this.

And then it's usually an exchange of people coming from Louisiana back up to the headwaters.

Each year I bring a different group of teachers down to learn about the Mississippi and the connection from where it starts in Minnesota, where it ends here.

And we have a team of Hawaiians from a charter school that are coming over and learning about the connections of rivers.

This whole experience just kind of reinforces that, the water is life idea.

It's so important to us, and yet we go about living our day to day lives and not really thinking about where our drinking water comes from.

We like to think about one river thinking the headwaters connecting to the Gulf.

And it's been a real blessing to come down here and see what is happening in the Gulf Coast and telling people from around the country what's happening in the Delta.

I think that the people in the country need to know about the Louisiana situation down here and what people can do about it.

Education can be an answer.

Can you really teach in a classroom how connected we all are?

Can you?

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, this is the first step of it is the connections that we adults are making for the greater good of our students.

I think that's the other thing of having someone feel empowered.

What can you do if there's a problem?

How can you engage?

Well, the first is to know about it.

A connection between a Louisiana foundation and a Minnesota university annually gathering educators to foster a collective understanding of the connection between the rivers, the sea and humanity.

Many different groups in our area are working hard to help restore our coast.

WYES recently hosted them at our Coastal Expo here at the station and invited the community to come learn about what's being done and how to get involved.

You can go to our website at wyes.org to get more info on these groups and the event and to also hear the discussion that we had with longtime coastal and environmental experts Steve Mathies, Mark Schleifstein and Steve Cochran about coastal restoration efforts.

And of course, I know both of you guys have big websites too where people can get information.

So why don't you tell us where we can go to find about STEM NOLA?

To find out about STEM NOLA its www.STEMNOLA.com.

To find out about STEM in your area across state of Louisiana, go to www.stemglobalaction.com.

All right and what about BTNEP?

Yeah so you can access information about the Barataria Terrebonne National estuary program at BTNEP.org.

All right a lot of good information there too.

And I know that there are lesson plans there, too.

If teachers want to go and sort of get an idea of what to present to their kids in the classroom.

All right.

Final thoughts.

We've been talking about all of these various areas of science that's going to be needed to help not only our coast, but our climate, the overall environment and opportunities for young people to pursue these kind of career paths and also the need for them to because we need these folks to continue doing the work that has been ongoing now to certainly to protect our coast.

What final messages would you impart to those folks watching out there?

I want every kid to know that each and every one of you has greatness in you and the state of Louisiana needs you.

The greatness that's within you.

You can achieve it right here in this state.

You don't have to go anywhere else.

All right.

That's a good thought, Bren.

I would certainly second that.

I would say that that Louisiana is currently ground zero for the issues that are facing not just Louisiana, but other parts of the country right now and really other parts of the world, whether it's community resilience, it's ecosystem restoration, climate adaptation or flood risk reduction.

And so the skills and the work that's being done in Louisiana, people from around the world literally are looking at the work that's going on here.

And so if you're here in Louisiana and you learn and cut your teeth and hone your skills on the issues that we're facing here in Louisiana, we want you to stay here.

But that that's an exportable skill as well.

And it's something that would be highly desirable, not just in Louisiana, but around the country and even around the world.

All right.

Very good.

Thanks so much, guys.

Thank you.

It's a really great conversation and thanks a lot for the great work that you both do.

It's just so very important for the future of Louisiana, how we're going to live here for our future generations, for our grandchildren.

Thanks, guys, a lot.

And thanks to all of you for watching as we continue to face challenges and try to seize the opportunities for the future for the Louisiana coast.

Thanks for watching.

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