June 20, 2008
Texas Awards Alvin Community College $2.3 Million Training Grant
To help keep Texas competitive in the ever-increasing global market and address local labor shortages, the Texas Workforce Commission recently awarded Alvin Community College a $2.3 million Skills Development Fund grant to provide upgrade training for incumbent workers at several local chemical companies.
“Competition is so great, many companies don’t have the additional resources to put toward training that could help their employees perform more efficiently,” said Jim Kelly, ACC’s grant manager for the project. “Better trained employees will help them compete with foreign markets.”
“This grant allows the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) to invest in the Texas workforce so Texas companies are more competitive,” he added.
“The chemical industry is also facing some of the greatest labor shortages in our lifetime,” ACC Workforce Development Coordinator and grant author Sara Bouse wrote in the application.
In addition to rapidly changing technology and a lack of qualified applicants, Bouse attributed a portion of the labor shortage to aging baby boomers.
“Several private partners reported that 50 percent of their current employee base will be eligible for retirement within the next 5 years,” she mentioned.
The TWC grant will fund over 36,000 training hours for over 1,200 employees at Solutia, INEOS, LyondellBasell and TEAM during the next year.
Core and advanced skills in instrumentation, electrical maintenance, process operations, systems maintenance, equipment maintenance, troubleshooting, computer operations and process improvement are examples of topics that will be covered throughout the approximately 35 courses offered.
“They have also formed a partnership to permit employees from the other companies to come to their plant for training,” Kelly mentioned.
“It’s a real innovative approach; the more people we have in the classes, the more synergistic learning occurs.”
By working together, the companies will be able to train more employees through the grant, as well.
According to Kelly, who has a doctorate in education from Auburn University and spent 25 years developing training programs in the process industry, the courses will be taught by experts in the field, including ACC faculty.
“We think it’s (the grant) a great benefit for the Alvin area and the plants who had the foresight and vision to participate with us,” he stated. “These plants recognize the employee as their most valuable asset.”
The grant not only supports the training needed by the four partner companies, but will also help ACC develop programs to better support the technical training needed by the region’s process industry.
