WAUSAU, Wis. (WSAU) -- Northcentral Technical College celebrated their remodeled and expanded welding lab with a ribbon cutting ceremony Tuesday. The new facility features 53 new work stations with welding equipment donated by Wisconsin based Miller Electric. NTC President Dr. Lori A. Weyers says the upgrade to the welding lab and their curriculum happened because of them. “We could not have accomplished this without Miller Electric. Their donation of equipment, their willingness to sit down and work with us, look at our curriculum, and be very involved.”
The campus used to graduate less than 35 welders a year. Weyers says area businesses urged them to find a way to train more welders. “We were able to, in one year, to increase our capacity to 70, and then we recognized that we were not going to be able to do that without us adding space. We needed more equipment. That is when our businesses stepped up.”
Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development Secretary Reggie Newson says the training dollars through the Fast Forward program are there to get more people into the right skills training to meet the demand. He says they’ve put millions into technical training, and there’s more investment coming. “If you look at round one and round two of Fast Forward for other programs in other high demand areas, we have over 12,000 Wisconsinites in training slots statewide, and six-million of those dollars out the door in awards, so we’re in really good shape there, and we’re going to continue to provide these resources for our employers and our workers statewide.”
Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch was also there for the ribbon cutting ceremony, and said Wisconsin needs to continue steering workers and young people to the skilled trades, and that includes reaching out to the younger grades. “We want to continue to grow manufacturing and agriculture, and the rest of our ten big industries that we see growing over the next decade, but in order to do that, we need to assure that the young people who are in our K-12 education system right now get the type of education they need in order to be the next internationally competitive workforce of the future.”
NTC’s newly completed 11,000 square foot welding lab will allow the school to train 120 students at a time.