Trenholm State Community College in Montgomery celebrated the grand opening Thursday for its new Advanced Manufacturing Training Center.
The center features 11 training stations covering advanced production, troubleshooting, robotics and more. It represents an investment of $2 million from federal and state sources plus equipment provided by the companies Festo, Siemens and Fanuc, which deal in automation and robotics.
The Alabama River Region FAME Chapter and Festo Didactic partnered on the project.
“Trenholm State is excited to unveil our new Advanced Manufacturing Center,” said Dr. Kemba Chambers, president of Trenholm State. “With multiple units of equipment, our students enrolled in the FAME program and Advanced Manufacturing program will be able to have hands-on lab experiences similar to those in the manufacturing fields. This new center will also bring additional Advanced Manufacturing training options for businesses and industries throughout the River Region.”
Trenholm’s dean of career and technical education and FAME coordinator, Danny Perry, also noted the key partnership of the River Region FAME chapter with Coca-Cola, Hager Companies, Hyundai Motor Manufacturing of Alabama, International Paper, James Hardie, Inteplast and Rheem.
“The utilization of training equipment is essential to the success of training our students. Students seem to learn best for this career field by applying knowledge they learn in a hands-on environment,” Perry added. “The equipment from Festo allows our students to utilize the textbooks chosen by the instructors in concert with the learning management system provided by Festo and apply the knowledge in a nearly identical environment that they will see within the workplace. The various training stations allow students to master the various skills for individualized applications as well as putting all their skills to work in a fully simulated work environment within the training lab.”
Speaking for Festo Didactic, Vice President Tony Oran said, “Over the course of the next decade, it’s estimated that over two million high-paying jobs could potentially go unfilled due to a shortage of qualified workers with proper exposure to Industry 4.0 education and career training. The new Advanced Manufacturing Training Center at Trenholm State signifies exciting progress towards our collective goal to close the STEM skills gap and guide students towards opportunities and success in any technical field of their choosing.”
