Marine Workforce Development: Building Careers That Last
At Chapman School of Seamanship, donated boats, practical training and plans for employer-led apprenticeships reveal what it takes to turn an interest in the water into a lasting marine career.
Before Mystic became a teaching vessel, the Grand Banks had carried its owner around the Great Loop. When that ambition was complete, the boat was donated to Chapman School of Seamanship, where it could become part of someone else’s education. It is a tangible example of marine workforce development: a vessel’s usefulness continuing through the people learning to operate and care for it.
For John Haggerty, Chief Operating Officer of Chapman School of Seamanship, access to boats is the beginning of a much longer undertaking. Students need the opportunity to discover an aptitude, develop it through practice and find employment in which that ability can grow. The work of the school reaches into all three.
Founded in 1971, Chapman occupies a waterfront campus in Port Salerno, Florida, where classrooms, workshops, accommodation and a donated training fleet bring education close to the conditions in which it will be used. A student can learn about a system, encounter it aboard a vessel and begin to understand the responsibilities attached to working on someone else’s boat.
Haggerty’s approach at Chapman School of Seamanship connects those responsibilities. Alongside Adrian Farmer, Operations Manager at TESS Electrical, and Bobby Mac Keen of the Marine Industries Association of the Treasure Coast, he makes a case for building the workforce through a closer relationship between education and employment.
Marine workforce development starts with the work
For Haggerty, curriculum development begins with conversations beyond the classroom. Shipyard owners, business managers and the people supervising technical teams can describe where skills are missing, which capabilities they need to preserve and who may soon retire.
Those conversations help a school decide what deserves a place in its teaching. A course can attract students and look impressive in a prospectus while still failing to prepare them for an available job. Haggerty’s stated objective is an entry-level technician who can make a useful contribution from the beginning, with a foundation for further development.
The distinction matters. An employer should understand what a graduate has learned, what they have practised and where supervision remains necessary. Students, in turn, should understand the kind of work their training prepares them to enter. A first qualification begins that process; competence continues to develop through experience.
Farmer brings the perspective of a marine electrical specialist. He describes vessels whose increasingly complex systems require people with the knowledge to maintain, repair and upgrade them. TESS Electrical’s work spans power management, automation, electrical engineering and refit support, illustrating how much technical capability sits behind a yacht’s day-to-day operation.
For an American refit business, the ability to attract work is tied to the people available to carry it out. Expanding facilities and winning projects also creates a need for technicians who can deliver the promised service. Training therefore belongs in the same business conversation as capacity, scheduling and customer confidence.
Learning on boats that people actually use
Chapman’s donated fleet gives students access to different vessels and stages of learning. Haggerty describes a progression from single-engine outboards to twin-engine boats and larger vessels, allowing students to build capability as their experience grows.
The same fleet supports technical training. Boats used by professional mariner and recreational students also create opportunities for maintenance students to encounter problems arising through actual operation. Equipment gets used, faults occur and repairs have a practical purpose. Students can connect what happens in the workshop with what happens on the water.
That is valuable preparation for service work, where a technician needs to understand the equipment in front of them and investigate the problem it presents. Classroom knowledge gains meaning when a student can apply it, see the result and discuss the next step with an instructor.
Chapman’s Yamaha Marine Maintenance Certification Program provides a structured example. The school currently describes a nine-week course combining lectures, interactive labs and competency testing, with training covering maintenance tasks associated with Yamaha’s specified service intervals. It is a defined route into outboard maintenance, with scope to build further expertise through work and continued training.
Professional habits are part of Haggerty’s account of that preparation. Attending consistently, arriving on time and learning how to function in a workplace matter alongside the technical material. An employer taking on a new entrant needs someone who can learn reliably within a team.
The campus also makes the range of marine work easier to understand. Engines, electrical systems, fiberglass, detailing, surveying and boatyard operations offer different kinds of work to people with different interests. Early exposure helps a student make a more informed choice about where to concentrate.
Apprenticeship needs an employer on the other end
The apprenticeship model discussed by Chapman, TESS Electrical and the American Refit Leadership Council would connect related technical instruction, often shortened to RTI, with structured learning at work. In that model, the school would provide the educational component while employers would help turn it into occupational experience.
The discussion concerns development of that pathway. Its importance lies in how the participants divide the responsibility.
A company receiving an apprentice needs to help define the skills required, provide appropriate supervision and assign people with the time and ability to mentor. Feedback to the school matters too: employers can identify where a learner is progressing, where further instruction would help and how the work itself is changing.
Maria Pierce Schoenheit, representing the American Refit Leadership Council, argues for employers to become active participants throughout that process. A training provider can prepare someone to enter the workplace, but the employer determines much of what happens after arrival.
For smaller businesses, participation requires real decisions about staff time and supervision. An experienced technician mentoring a newcomer is making an investment that must fit within the working day. A credible programme needs employers willing to make room for that learning and explain how increased capability can lead to increased responsibility.
Haggerty also sees an opportunity to expand the number of people available to the industry. Moving experienced workers between businesses may fill individual vacancies, but bringing in new entrants can increase the workforce itself.
“It's not recycling the same employees. It's bringing in new people that want to be in our industry, giving them the skills they need to make a difference.”
John Haggerty, Chapman School of Seamanship.
That gives competing businesses a reason to cooperate on training. They share an interest in developing a larger pool of capable people, even as they continue to compete for projects and employees.
Retention is part of the training investment
One of the most revealing parts of the discussion concerns what happens when a trained employee leaves.
Haggerty acknowledges the concern employers express about paying for someone’s development only to see that person join a competitor. Farmer accepts that possibility while placing responsibility on the business to create a workplace where people want to remain. Better-trained employees can improve the working environment and strengthen the company’s ability to undertake more demanding projects.
Mac Keen takes the argument into pay and benefits. If the industry invites people to build their futures in marine work, employers must make that proposition credible. Compensation, working conditions and opportunities to advance all influence whether someone stays.
This is particularly important for a new entrant whose skills are developing quickly. Haggerty describes the risk of bringing someone in at a low starting rate and failing to advance them as their contribution grows. The employee may leave because another business recognises the value they have acquired.
An employer’s training investment therefore continues beyond the course fee or hours of instruction. It includes reviewing progress, recognising increased competence and showing the employee what comes next. A conversation about a two-year or five-year future becomes more convincing when the steps towards it are visible.
The discussion offers a useful challenge to the industry’s language around shortages. Recruiting more people and keeping capable employees are connected tasks. A school can introduce and prepare candidates; a company must then give those people good reasons to build their careers there.
Opening routes for young people and veterans
For some potential entrants, the first obstacle is awareness. Haggerty points out that people can live near the water without understanding the range of careers in the marine industry.
Youth boating programmes create an early point of contact. Learning to handle a vessel can develop confidence and reveal interests that a conventional description of the trades might never reach. Haggerty describes the satisfaction of seeing a young student progress to handling a larger boat appropriately. The experience gives them something concrete on which to build.
Short introductory technical courses can take that exploration further. Chapman’s ABYC Fundamentals of Marine Service Technology programme currently offers two weeks of hands-on exposure to marine systems. For someone considering the trades, an introduction across several areas can help them decide whether to pursue more specialised training.
Veterans bring a different starting point. Some already have technical experience and a strong understanding of working within structured teams. Farmer discusses the possibility of recognising relevant military skills within the apprenticeship pathway being developed, so that previous experience can inform an appropriate starting level.
That requires an assessment of what the individual can demonstrate and how it relates to the work. The U.S. Department of Labor’s apprenticeship guidance recognises the principle of advanced standing based on documented prior experience; applying it within a particular programme depends on that programme’s arrangements.
Chapman also provides information for veterans about eligible educational benefits and its career programmes. Access to support and recognition of prior skills address different needs, but both can help a veteran make a more purposeful transition into civilian marine employment.
Training capacity has a physical footprint
There is a practical limit to every ambition discussed on the tour: the school needs room to teach.
Haggerty describes classroom constraints affecting plans to work with local school districts, alongside efforts to adapt teaching spaces and explore additional premises. A potential pathway for students in Martin and St. Lucie counties depended partly on finding somewhere to deliver it.
The waterfront has its own requirements. Shoreline improvements and floating docks support the setting in which students gain experience. Donated boats need appropriate berths, maintenance and a clear educational purpose. Equipment and instructors must be available when a course needs them.
These details help explain the range of contributions an industry partnership can make. Employers can share their requirements, support mentoring and offer genuine entry-level opportunities. Owners and other supporters can contribute suitable vessels, equipment or resources that strengthen the school’s ability to teach.
The value of that involvement is clearest when it connects to a specific learning outcome. A boat such as Mystic gives students something to work towards as their handling skills progress. A workshop gives a developing technician somewhere to practise. A committed employer gives that preparation a direction.
For American refit, building capability means sustaining those connections over time. The student’s first useful contribution matters, and so does the opportunity to become the experienced person who eventually teaches someone else. That is how an introduction to the industry can grow into a career, and how today’s training investment can support tomorrow’s work.
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