SouthArk marks new beginning with Advanced Manufacturing Training Center
AMTC expected to open in January 2018
EL DORADO — South Arkansas Community College kicked of its year-long 25th anniversary celebration with the groundbreaking for the Charles A. Hays Advanced Manufacturing Training Center.
The AMTC will house classrooms, equipment and lab space for the college’s industrial technology, advanced welding and process technology programs. At the groundbreaking ceremony, SouthArk administrators and industry partners gushed over its projected academic and economic impact in the county and region’s future.
SouthArk board of trustees chair Steve Cousins, is a retired engineer who worked at Lion Oil for over 30 years, ending with a tenure as the company’s vice-president and plant manager. Cousins said that technicians use a complex process to produce propane, oil and asphalt and before he hung up his hat, that process required more training than before.
“You need a handful of engineers to engineer and you need a handful of accountants to account things, but what you really need is the heart and soul of the company — the people with their hands on the equipment and on the computers, doing the work,” Cousins said. “It’s not the kind of thing you can come out of high school and be excellent at now. Harder work requires better training and this facility that we’re building … is a huge step in the continuation of the great work SouthArk’s been doing.”
SouthArk foundation board chair Greg Withrow, was part of the beginning stages of conceptualizing the AMTC and said that breaking ground took several years of planning.
“We had … to figure out how to get people trained and I remember eight years ago or nine years ago we were sitting around in a room and we all went to our bone yard,” Withrow said. “What we did was go out there, got a bunch of those pieces, cut them in half and began to build a program in order to teach people what the inside of a valve looks like.”
Withrow, who’s also the plant manager at El Dorado Chemical, said that a group of other plant managers recognized that the workforce was getting older and technical education was on a decline. Seeing a need to replenish a depleted trained workforce, several local industries, private donors and government agencies made personal, financial and educational commitments to support this effort, he said.
“That’s one thing that El Dorado, Union County, the college and the people here are known to do. We don’t wait for someone to tell us how to fix it,” Withrow said. “What came out that was slowly but surely a P-tech program … the process trainer in there and the process began to grow.”
The lack of workforce training and education is “the number one issue impacting economic development,” Delta Regional Authority chair Chris Masingill said.
“I want to say thank you for your commitment to our part of the country, for creating opportunities for our children and our grandchildren because you have done that,” Masingill said. “We have not done that, but what we’ve come along side the local community to say is, ‘Look. we’re propping this up. We’re leveraging these dollars because that’s exactly what we’re supposed to do.”
Economic Development Administration regional director Jorge Ayala said that “collaboration and regionalism in that collaboration” make developments like the AMTC successful. Technicians and welders will have to wait until the Spring 2018 semester before they can get hands-on experience at the 14,000 square foot building on the hill, SouthArk President Dr. Barbara Jones said.
Brittany Williams may be contacted by email at bwilliams@eldoradonews.com. Follow her on Twitter and like her on Facebook @BWilliamsEDNT for updates on Union County school news.