John Jay’s tech center takes shape

How do you improve household incomes?

You build a workforce with skills that are valuable in the marketplace.

That’s one of the premises behind the new industrial maintenance training program being launched this fall at John Jay Center for Learning.

Instructors arrived this week to begin training John Jay’s lead instructor Brian Flick and teachers from Jay County High School on how to put to use some $800,000 in high-tech equipment that has been installed in the lower level of the learning center.

That equipment was purchased with the help of a $925,000 grant from Indiana Department of Workforce Development and donations from a number of manufacturers The local match — much of it in-kind — was an estimated $2 million.

“We got what the manufacturers wanted,” John Jay executive director Rusty Inman said this week. “They chose the curriculum.”

From the start, the emphasis has been on employer-driven curriculum and employer-driven workforce training.

When Inman began meeting with local manufacturers, the message was loud and clear: There’s a need for highly trained personnel in the field of industrial maintenance.

“We have a group of people who are taking knowledge with them when they retire,” said Inman. There will be an ongoing need to fill those roles, and that’s going to require a special skill set. “We want to show high school kids you can stay home and make a living. … We are trying to equip students with the tools to command a better salary in the workplace.”

What sorts of skills?

•Mechanical drive systems.

•Liquid flow control.

•Pneumatics.

•Hydraulics.

•Rigging.

•Welding.

•CNC lathe and milling operations.

•Industrial robotics.

•Programmable logic controllers.

“Everything will be competency based,” said Inman. Rather than courses structured to cover a specific period of time, students will move at their own speed.

With the help of the advanced manufacturing program that has been in operation for several years at the Wright State University-Lake Campus in Celina, Ohio, John Jay will be offering online instruction. That will be followed by hands-on instruction in the industrial maintenance classroom in the basement at John Jay.

In some cases, that instruction will be on scaled-down versions of equipment actually found in local workplaces.

For instance, a one-ton rigging crane is the largest that could fit in the available space. But someone who learns how to operate it can operate its much larger big brothers.

“It’s all transferable,” said Inman.

Inman doubted that welding could be included in the curriculum until he learned that down-draft ventilation tables could handle the fumes efficiently and safely.

“It’s all self-contained. … We’re not teaching production welding,” he said. “We’re teaching maintenance welding.”

While most of the skills to be taught are already needed in local manufacturing, some of the equipment was purchased with an eye toward the future.

“Our manufacturers were very adamant that they wanted 3-D printing down here,” said Inman. “They view it as the tool room of the future.”

From the beginning, the decisions made for putting the program together have been guided by the Jay-Blackford Manufacturing Council, an alliance of employers, John Jay, Jay Schools and Blackford County Schools.

And help from Wright State has proved invaluable. The advanced manufacturing program at the Lake Campus has graduated more than 600 students, about 50 to 75 each year.

Current plans call for an initial class of 8 to 12 students, hand-picked by local manufacturers from their own plants, to begin work in September.

After that maiden voyage, the program will be assessed and tweaked then opened to high school students in January.

“We hope to have high school students in here this school year,” said Inman. “There’s going to be growing pains. There’s going to be a learning curve.”

Students will be able to receive training in all of the available areas or choose what they want on an “a la carte” basis.

Even before its first class the program is drawing attention all around the state. The Center for Excellence in Learning and Leadership wants to use the

John Jay program as a showcase for others. Groups from Rush and Fayette counties stopped by this week to take a tour.