As skilled laborers age into retirement and fewer younger workers appear to take their places, the number of U.S. tradespeople is shrinking. 

That’s why, in a dimly lit gymnasium more than four hours from their shipyard Friday, instructors from Bath Iron Works taught 12-year-olds in Limestone how to weld.

A hands-on workshop allowed children attending the Maine School of Science and Mathematics’ STEM Summer Camp to use the same virtual and augmented reality tools Bath Iron Works — Maine’s fourth largest employer — uses to train its employees in stick welding and spray painting.

The company brings its virtual tools across Maine, from career fairs to high schools to career and technical education programs, to introduce students both to the trades and Bath Iron Works. The goal? To create a pipeline of young talent that can shore up its workforce and overcome staffing challenges.

“A lot of times, kids haven’t had experience welding, or where are you going to get to experience spray painting?” BIW High School Workforce Development Coordinator Meridith Gray said. “This is a way to do it that’s safe and it helps them and it’s engaging. If you can gamify a lot of different skills, you’re going to get a lot of kids interested in it.”

Virtual and augmented reality programs are a new cornerstone of how BIW trains its workers. The company’s virtual reality lab in Brunswick offers programming in welding, painting, sand blasting and forklift, crane and stockpicker operation.

A screen shows a live view of a Maine School of Science and Mathematics STEM camper’s welding in augmented reality. Credit: Cameron Levasseur / The County

It saves the business significant material cost. For a 90-second test demonstration of its VR spray painting system where an instructor only partially painted an I-beam, the program estimated a cost savings of more than $550.

It also trains workers faster.

“Usually it takes three to four days for somebody to start passing qualifications in welding school,” Gray said. “If they practice on this it goes down to a day or two.”

At MSSM, none of the middle-school campers are poised to jump into a career in welding — at least not quite yet — but the workshop was one of dozens of learning experiences at the STEM camp designed to enrich campers’ knowledge in those fields.

The annual four-week summer camp runs through July. The first week is open to children aged 10-12, and the latter three weeks for those aged 12-14. Each week’s lessons emphasize a theme. This year’s themes — discovery, space, terra and tech — each brought in 50-70 campers from across Maine and beyond.

Campers experience a mixture of hands-on lessons at the school and field trips to pertinent locations, from the Francis Malcolm Science Center in Easton to the National Weather Service station in Caribou and Twin Rivers Paper Company in Madawaska.

Garrett Kirk, a rising freshman at MSSM who is from Hermon, chose to attend the school in part because of the camp, which he attended for a third year this summer.

“I like science and I like how they really went deep into science,” Kirk said. “I saw their science classes and I looked into my school and what they offered and [MSSM] offered a lot more in-depth stuff here.”

The school upgraded its camp this year, said Ryan McDonald, MSSM’s director of communications and summer programs.

“It used to be more fun with STEM, this year we made it so each class has a learning objective,” he said. “So, when they finish the photography class, they are comfortable using a DSLR camera.”

Bath Iron Works made the drive north twice during the camp, first during discovery week, where campers learned about buoyancy and hull shape in a tinfoil regatta.

Nolan Haynes of Pownal, a camper at the Maine School of Science and Mathematics’ summer STEM camp in Limestone, assesses the stability of his “cheese whiz welding” structure. Credit: Cameron Levasseur / The County

“[Gray] reached out to me and said, ‘Would you like to take a tour of Bath Iron Works?’” McDonald said. “I was like, ‘That’s amazing, except you’re four or five hours away, there’s no way we could do that.’ And she said, ‘We’ll come to you.’”

The company’s second appearance capped off the last week of the camp, serving as both an introduction to the trades and a final hook for campers interested in going to MSSM.

It’s a vital recruiting tool for the residential magnet school and the first of several stops in The County this year for Bath Iron Works. The company plans to bring its virtual and augmented reality systems to high schools and CTE centers in Presque Isle, Caribou and Houlton this fall.

“At some point I calculated something like 57 percent of current MSSM students attended at least one week of summer camp at one point,” McDonald said. “So it’s a good feeder program. It’s also just really fun.”