Proposed Southampton College of the Trades Could Expand Career Education on the South Fork

Stony Brook Southampton’s campus could be home to a vocational school, if the nascent Southampton College of the Trades has its way.

Spearheaded by three men — Greg Melita, the founder of Hamptons Jiu Jitsu,; Frank DeVito, the owner of DeVito & Company; and Jeff Ciolino, an occupational therapist — the proposed college seeks to help students find alternatives to a bachelor’s or associate degree while providing a skilled workforce to the burgeoning blue collar workforce on the East End.

To raise funds and community support for the program, the organization hosted an informational luncheon last Wednesday, July 26, at Main Prospect, a restaurant in Southampton.

Ciolino remarked that, for high school graduates not interested in attending college, there aren’t a lot of options. “If you’re not going to college on the East End, you’re left drifting,” Ciolino said.

And even for students who do go to college, he noted, it can be hard to find a pathway for after college.

“There are a lot of people who don’t have an exact career path. There are colleges where you make up your own major, but it doesn’t really give you a career,” Ciolino said. “There are students graduating with associate degrees who don’t know what they want to do. And there are students who aren’t interested in going to college at all.”

The Southampton College of the Trades, or SCOTT, as the three have named it, hopes to usher kids into trade careers through skill development and internship placement with industry partners.

DeVito says that SCOTT also serves to fill an employment gap needed by local companies. “In the ’90s, the East End was full of skilled labor,” he said. “Now, we have to spend a lot of time training new employees.”

Ciolino added that, with cooperation between the school and students, workforce shortages, especially those precipitated by the pandemic, can be more easily resolved. “We are focused on connecting people with an industry that needs people,” he said.

Building a college, though, is no easy feat, as Ciolino acknowledged. However, he stated they have set a tentative start date for a year from now, with hopes to use facilities at the Stony Brook Southampton campus.

“We’re in the process of looking for locations now,” he said. “We’d love for it to be at the college, but we’re making sure to have a backup.”

Getting a location is only half the story; as Ciolino explained, the facilities and instruction must also be adequate in order for SCOTT to achieve its mission.

“We’re gonna license a curriculum from a company called the Home Builders Institute, which provides all the instruction,” he said. “And we’re gonna have to do improvements to our classroom space and build it out. It’s a big job.”

To fund the educational institution, Ciolino said it will register as a nonprofit organization and will accept donations, noting strong industry support for the program.

The potential benefits of founding such a college, DeVito explained, are vast. He noted that construction as an industry is valued at over $1.9 billion nationally and estimated that the products and services of 1,500 companies are used in the construction of a house.

Furthermore, DeVito positioned SCOTT as a potential solution to the housing crisis on the South Fork. “You won’t need affordable housing when people can actually afford housing because they’re working well-paying jobs,” he said.

To get the program kicked off, Melita announced that SCOTT will be hosting a trade exposition on September 16, for students at local high schools to explore careers in the trades.

Present at the event was State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., who was on hand to voice support for the project. “This fits well within Albany’s push to provide more career and technical education,” he said.

Thiele, who went to Southampton College, which formerly occupied the Stony Brook Southampton campus, stated he is personally invested in ensuring the campus property maintains an educational use, at least in some capacity.

However, he noted there are some difficulties in appropriating use of state facilities to a private nonprofit. “A lease for the property would have to pass the New York State Legislature,” he said.

Also in attendance were business owners from across Long Island who were interested in how the program could help them.

Greg Pasquale, an engineering consultant for ASG, said that the program could be an excellent resource for his firm, which is continually searching for skilled labor.

“A lot of the work we’re doing is in New York City, where the labor is unionized,” he said. “Union construction is a great job with a lot of benefits.”

Other businesses are feeling the labor shortage as well. Patty Dolan, a general manager at Hampton Jitney, said that the company was having a hard time filling vacancies in its bus repair facilities.

“This could help, while also reducing the trade parade,” she said.

In the end, it’s about helping local students achieve their goals, Ciolino said.

“We’re not trying to funnel kids away from college,” he said. “We just want to give them better options.”