The apprenticeship acronym of the day is... NASTAD

We've started to give you some sense of what apprenticeship terms and organizations you need to know. Here's another acronym to put on your radar, NASTAD.

What is NASTAD?

NASTAD stands for the National Association of State and Territorial Apprenticeship Directors. You can find their recently relaunched website at https://saadirectors.org/.

As mentioned earlier this week in our post about OA versus SAA states, the apprenticeship system is incredibly state specific. In slightly more than half of all states, apprenticeships are regulated by a federally-recognized State Apprenticeship Agency, SAA. NASTAD is comprised of the leadership from these SAAs.

Think of it as an organization of state, and territory, leadership for the apprenticeship system.

Why is NASTAD?

Now this is a great question. When we asked folks at their conference in Seattle in August, it exists largely to share best practices between SAAs. Some of these lessons are transferable; others may be not if laws differ in their state.

From their LinkedIn group, we can see that NASTAD has been in operation since 1950 to represent the directors of state and territorial apprenticeship programs. In essence, the group exists in order to pool together to work and influence the OA, office of apprenticeship, in their handling of apprenticeship. A quick google of NASTAD and apprenticeship gives you an example of how this works in practice if you find this letter from Todd Berch, NASTAD president, to the ACA, Advisory Committee on Apprenticeship. In that letter, you can see NASTAD's reaction to a particular wage discussion and find the list of states represented by the NASTAD President's response at the bottom.

How does it impact you?

If you're hailing from an OA state, it likely doesn't impact you at all. If you're established in an SAA state member of NASTAD, your main contact is likely to be with SAA leadership. SAA leadership can advocate on your behalf towards the apprenticeship system collectively as NASTAD in their work influencing the federal system. Essentially, this is just another example of how the apprenticeship is structured, and how important it is for you to be connected to representatives and leadership from your state. That's true for OA state apprenticeships, but it's especially true if you're an apprenticeship sponsor in an SAA state.