Rowan-Cabarrus Community College recently announced a $200,000 investment from Duke Energy and Piedmont Natural Gas to support the college’s new Multicraft Maintenance Technician Apprenticeship program. The funds will be used to connect students with hands-on training and career development opportunities.
The program will offer apprenticeship instructions on electrical, mechanical, machining, programmable logic controls (PLC’s), welding, fabrication, and HVAC instruction. Apprentices completing this program will be multicraft certified and equipped to handle a variety of maintenance issues.
The grant will generously fund all tuition, book, and material costs for each apprentice over the next four years. In addition, the grant allocates money to purchase new equipment and related supplies that will be housed in the college’s new Advanced Manufacturing Training Center in Kannapolis, North Carolina, which is slated to open at the end of 2019.
“We started this program because companies need more multicraft maintenance technicians who have a mastery of all required job duties, but most of our local companies do not have the critical mass to run an apprenticeship program,” Kerry Motley, apprenticeship director and account manager in business services at Rowan-Cabarrus, said. “By the college taking on the administrative functions, this allows companies to join a collective of manufacturing companies to ensure that their apprentices get the training they need when they need it.”
“This partnership with Rowan-Cabarrus will fill an ever-growing demand for skilled workers at Chroma Color Corporation as we continue to grow. We are excited about this program because Rowan-Cabarrus will host and register the apprenticeship program as well as provide all related classroom instruction and overseeing the on-the-job-training for enrolled apprentices. This kind of training solution reduces the internal staff support we would have needed to provide an apprentice if we tried to do this on our own. From our point of view, the choice to participate in this kind of program was easy to make,” stated Matt Barr, vice chairman of Chroma Color Corporation. “It is also really great to see companies such as Duke Energy and Piedmont Natural Gas invest in our local community. ”
“The expansion of apprenticeship programs across the United States is preparing workers for the rapidly changing economy and filling existing and new jobs in the future,” David King, lead account manager in business services at Rowan-Cabarrus, said. Employees will participate in theoretical instruction and 2,000 hours of on-the-job training each year for four years simultaneously.
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