On September 24, Connor Wallace stood on a stage in Atlanta and was named Georgia’s 2026 Work-Based Learning Student of the Year, recognized by Governor Brian Kemp at the Governor’s Workforce Summit. He is a senior at Stephens County High School. He is also, and has been since he was 16, part of the team at ASI Southeast.
The award is his. The story underneath it is about how a manufacturer in a tight labor market decides to build the workforce it needs.
The numbers behind the award
Connor started at our Toccoa plant in December 2024, weeks after turning 16. Since then: zero absences, zero tardies, zero early departures. He earned our 2025 Perfect Attendance Award and has held that record through 2026. As of August he had logged 2,534 Work-Based Learning hours and is on pace to pass our program record of 3,100 before he graduates.
Attendance is the easy part to measure. What earned him a statewide award is what he did once he was on the floor.
During our Locker Business Unit’s continuous improvement competition, Connor redesigned the UPS staging process. The result removed about 158,720 employee steps a year, close to 80 miles of walking, and saved an estimated $5,000 annually. He took home the “Most Steps Saved” award.
He was then picked as one of five people to represent the Locker Business Unit in our company-wide continuous improvement championship. That team’s project produced roughly $35,000 in annual savings and won the whole thing. Connor was named Best Presenter.
He is seventeen.
Why the program exists
ASI Southeast sits in Toccoa, about 90 miles northeast of Atlanta near the South Carolina line. It is good manufacturing country, and like a lot of good manufacturing country, it has more open skilled roles than people trained to fill them.
There are two ways to respond to that. You can compete harder for the workers who already exist, which is expensive and which everyone else is also doing. Or you can build them.
Our Work-Based Learning program, developed by ASI Southeast General Manager Stephen Wallace in partnership with Stephens County Schools, takes the second route. Students join the plant during the school year and return across successive summers. They learn the equipment, the processes and the people. By the time graduation arrives, the question is not whether they can do the work. They have been doing it for years.
The part that matters most is the last step: a defined path to full-time employment after school. A summer job that ends is a summer job. A summer job that leads somewhere is the start of a career.
Nine years of it
The program started with four students. Since then it has hired 67 young men and women out of three area high schools, most from Stephens County High.
Graduates have worked more than 57,736 hours at ASI, and that number does not count the twelve students in the plant right now. They have earned over $1 million in wages, nearly all of it spent within a few miles of where it was earned.
About 80 percent stay with us after they graduate. Roughly half are still here three years later. In nine years, exactly one didn’t work out.
Today, 32 percent of the operations workforce at our 900 Plant came through Work-Based Learning. Across ASI’s Georgia operations, it is about one in ten.
The partnership is the difference
Plenty of manufacturers run internships. Fewer run them in genuine collaboration with a county school system, with coordinators, credit hours and a structure that the school recognizes and the student can build on.
That collaboration is why Connor is also our Work-Based Learning Team Captain, serving as liaison between ASI, the students in the program and the high school. He has led plant tours, represented us at job fairs and helped train other employees. The program did not just give him a job. It gave him a role in making it work for the people coming after him.
What comes next
Connor maintains a 4.393 weighted GPA, ranks 12th in his class and has completed 51 college credit hours through dual enrollment and Advanced Placement coursework. He has options, and he should.
Whatever he chooses, the program continues. There are more students in the plant this fall, and a record of 3,100 hours that somebody is going to break eventually.
Congratulations, Connor. Well earned.