Training and expanding the north Alabama workforce, that’s what Snead State Community College’s brand new Workforce and Career Institute is designed to do.
The new 35 million dollar facility provides courses and training in four major programs including: welding, heating and cooling, industrial systems technology, and machine tool technology.
Classes began this fall after four years of planning and construction.
The president of Snead State says the facility is for anyone looking for career advancement.
“It’s a great opportunity for not just our local incumbent workers who may be looking for some extra skills to get a promotion at work, but also for incoming, new students, non-traditional students,” Joe Whitmore said, “anyone that wants those extra skills and training to be employed.”
Dr. Todd Freshwater the Career Technology Division Director & industrial systems technology instructor says the new facility has technology that will allow instructors like himself to teach students in a way that wasn’t possible before.
“What we’re able to do here is prepare students to be able to go into the workforce and make a difference immediately for their employers,” Dr. Freshwater said.
Industrial systems technology student Eric Schmitz says Dr. Freshwater’s robotics class has helped him refine his machinery skills.
He says the Workforce and Career Institute has resources and technology that you can’t get anywhere else.
“This building gives us worlds of new space, and new technology to play with and even more person to professor interactions because they’re not fighting for time and space as they were in the other building that we were in,” Schmitz said.
President Whitmore says the new facility will impact more than just its students and faculty.
“We want to continue to grow, we want to continue to be able to train workers, we want to continue to be able to attract business and industry to this county,” Whitmore said, “by doing that, we can fill the jobs, we can help grow the labor participation rate in here, but more than that we’re changing people’s lives.”
President Whitmore has many goals for the future of the institute including adding more classes and general education courses next school year.