Photos by Ralph Freso
At the end of each semester, Shelly Seitz welcomes working men and women who ditch the hardhats to dress up for the Night of Celebration at Grand Canyon University.
Often, college wasn’t a fit, and service jobs seemed limiting. But Seitz and the team from the GCU Center for Workforce Development gave them a new avenue – semester-long programs that launch them into careers in the electrician or machinist trades.
It is her favorite night, to see them proud with their families.
“I am up there shaking hands with them and all their stories come up with them, the dreams and struggles, and I’m just seeing all their lives are changing,” she said.
It hits close to home as a woman who is helping persuade females to join the GCU pathways at higher rates – roughly 10% of participants each semester – than work in those trades.
Seitz herself was once a college dropout who worked in a nail salon. But she went on to gather vital life experience in numerous jobs, earned two college degrees and came to GCU as a program manager for the workforce center when it launched in 2022.
“Some of the women are re-careering and are coming back and don’t know what to do. I see myself in them,” she said.
She shook the hand of Rylee Wilkins, who said she came to Arizona from Georgia alone on a “hope and a dream,” worked on a Payson horse ranch and found GCU’s Pre-Apprenticeship for Electricians pathway last January.
It wasn’t easy, but she said Seitz was the driving force behind her success, working with her when she needed to return to Georgia for a family death, trying to get her a laptop when hers broke, and prayed with her when she needed hope and support.
“She’s always right there right behind me, 10 toes behind me, right on top of it,” said Wilkins, who completed the pathway in April. “I don’t know what I would have done without her.”
Seitz is a warm presence in the growing program, which has seen 288 complete pathways in just three years in either the Pre-Apprenticeship for Electricians or Computer Numerical Control Machinist (CNC) pathways. They are trades in high demand in the community and nationwide, and this fall a new GCU workforce center launches in Austin, Texas.
Women have been attracted in part due to Seitz’s efforts, as she mentors and connects them to industry as a recently elected member of the board of directors for the local chapter of the National Association of Women in Construction.
“She brings a motherly touch to the classroom that she affectionately calls ‘Adulting 101,’” said Brian Jones, the workforce center’s director. “The way our students react to her is palpable. Many of our students stay in contact with her post graduation, which is a testament to the relationships she builds. She is a champion for attracting women to the trades.”
In addition to the NAWIC, Seitz has helped partner with Women in Manufacturing, Fresh Start Women’s Foundation and the Arouet Foundation and co-leads GCU’s Women in the Trades working group on campus.
“I want them to be part of a mentoring process that connects them with accomplished and established women in the industry that have paved the way,” Seitz said. “It will better prepare them for success in the workforce.”
Women are suited to the trades, she said, despite it still being male-dominated. “Women are detail oriented, and typically good multitaskers and good communicators.”
It’s a natural for Seitz to be in a job that helps others take an unexpected path.
She calls herself a “late bloomer” who tried one semester of studying music before becoming a top nail technician in hometown Rockford, Illinois. She parlayed that interest into studying fashion and several years later got her bachelor’s degree in fashion and textiles at Southern Illinois University.
That led her to Phoenix to work at Dillard’s managing cosmetics and eventually to starting her own business helping clients with visual stylings and presentation as well as home organization.
After earning a master’s degree in organizational management at the University of Phoenix, she continued to help others by supervising the Virginia Piper Cancer Center’s boutique, where women going through treatment are fitted with wigs and bras.
“We were helping them through the worst time in their lives, so they felt whole and felt normal,” she said. “I walked through devasting situations with women, but I cried with them when they could look normal again and feel pretty again.”
But when she found out about the launch of the trade pathways at GCU, it brought all the skills she had gathered to campus. After all, she grew up in a blue-collar family, whose father and brothers do home remodeling, taught her how to change a tire and, if her dresser knob was loose, well, you know where to find the screwdriver.
Seitz immediately saw industry support from Rosendin Electric, who helped inspire the pathway, and then Corbins, another electrical contractor, and numerous other partners. The 15-week program combines academics such as math and English with training in electrical and, for the CNC Machinists Pathway, on LUX Precision Manufacturing machines on campus.
She helped grow the pathways with Mickey Nuñez, who complemented her skills with classroom experience. She said they came to call themselves “mom and dad of the classroom.”
“This has become a big force of people working together to grow it so people can better their lives and have good, prosperous careers,” she said, citing one of the first participants to complete the program who is now making six figures.
Seitz also brought to class a woman who is now a master electrician and once was a single mother with no home or car. “You need to see yourself in those professions, so we are cognizant of bringing in people of different color and women,” she said.
She helps fight back against rigid gender roles. The common factor she sees in the women in the program is “grit.” They aren’t afraid to stand aside a man in a hardhat, just like Rylee Wilkins, who after pathway completion got a job at K2 Electric. But when work orders slowed and she was laid off, the next day Seitz was busy helping her.
Wilkins soon was hired by Corbins Electric and starts Aug. 12. She will continue to work alongside mostly men, who “are going to baby you because you are a woman and expect you not to be able to do things. But most times it’s like a brotherhood in the field; they are right behind you if anything happens.
“I don’t know what direction I would have gone without Shelly. Now I come home and feel accomplished, a little bit of mud and sweat on me, but at the end of the day you have worked your butt off trying to make a difference.”
Seitz can relate. She’s worked hard building a career, knowing she’s making a difference for others. It’s confirmed every year by shaking hands on that stage.
“I see that as kind of a culmination of dreams,” she said. “I see that glint in their eye and promise. It sounds cheesy, but it’s true, they have found a purpose.”
Grand Canyon University senior writer Mike Kilen can be reached at [email protected].
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