After attending Great River Energy’s Cooperative Careers Camp last year, one Minnesota teen left with a pretty good idea about his future. 

“We received a comment from a parent whose son came home and showed them a picture of what he called his ‘future office,’” says Melissa Phillips, manager of field services at the Maple Grove-based generation and transmission cooperative. “He’d taken a selfie in the bucket truck.”

Going up in a bucket was one of several career-related activities that high schoolers and recent graduates from across the state explored at the daylong expo designed by the G&T to grow a future skilled workforce.  

“When so many people are retiring from the utility industry, we need to be able to focus on succession and build that pipeline well in advance,” says Heather Bittle, Great River Energy’s talent and outreach partner. “If we’re not building the awareness, the next generation is not going to even know about … the career opportunities that exist at co-ops. The camp is definitely an opportunity for students to come out and get a real-life understanding.” 

At the G&T’s Elk River campus last June, the camp’s attendees got an up-close look at careers in substation apparatus, metering, line construction and maintenance, telecommunications, power system protection, peaking plant operator, high voltage direct current, survey, geographic information systems, drones and system operations.

As a hiring manager, Phillips says it can be a struggle to get candidates with prior experience or the right education for these positions. That’s where the G&T’s careers camp, only in its second year, is making an impression. 

“We’ve received a lot of positive feedback about the camp from parents and students, but also from our own employees,” says Phillips. “One of our employees said, ‘Wow, I wish something like this existed when I was in high school, because I didn’t find out about jobs like this until 10 years into my career.’” 

Career Camp begins at 7:30 a.m. when attendees register, get breakfast, a T-shirt and a cinch bag with a brochure on co-op jobs and contact information for Great River Energy’s 26 member co-ops. Bittle and Phillips give a safety presentation before campers receive personal protection equipment and break into groups to visit each career station. The students also watch a pole-climbing demonstration and tour the substation and plant before the program ends at 4:30 p.m. 

At lunch, campers talk with Great River Energy staff about jobs that caught their interest. 

“We had some of the best conversations over lunch,” Phillips says of the first camp, which drew 50 attendees in 2024. “I met a 14-year-old girl who decided she wanted to be a telecom technician that day. It was great to get to talk to her more. We’ll see where her future lands, hopefully with us.”

This year, East Central Energy, headquartered in Braham, plans to join the G&T with a safety trailer and staff to discuss careers at distribution co-ops. Great River Energy also invited technical schools to set up booths and welcomed parents to talk with technicians about their education and careers.  

“A lot of times, parents are like, ‘No, no, no. You need a four-year degree,’ but if their child sees there’s all these cool career options with two-year degrees, parents might want to come in and talk with our technicians and ask questions to get a better understanding,” says Bittle. “In the end, they might go, ‘Wow, my child is super excited about this, and I’m going to support them on it.’” 

Tyler Tschimperle, supervising manager of substation apparatus at Great River Energy, told campers how his team maintains large equipment like transformers and battery banks and gave them a go on a circuit breaker simulator. 

“To show them what we do on a daily basis opens their minds and really translates well to students who learn hands-on,” says Tschimperle, who was a journeyman electrician at a couple of distribution co-ops and a G&T before coming to Great River Energy. 

“The camp is a great way to reach out to the community, raise awareness about co-ops and make an impact on somebody who is looking to enter the trades and give them guidance, which is important when there are a lot of retirements coming up in the next 10 years. The time to raise awareness is now.”