Tech college enters new partnership
Plan could allow wider scope for custom training
By Scott Rochat
Friday, October 27, 2006
Flint Hills Technical College announced a new partnership Thursday with the Mid-America Manufacturing Technology Center, allowing the school a wider scope for its customized training.
The announcement came as part of the college’s “Making It In Emporia” event which also celebrated the school’s new Business and Industry Center and offered a “Manufacturer’s Crawl” that toured three Emporia industrial businesses.
“People don’t realize how many good jobs there are in manufacturing,” said Susan Estes, a spokesperson for MAMTC (pronounced “Mam-Tech”). “It’s not just ‘dirty work.’”
MAMTC is a business consultant for small to mid-size manufacturers that focuses on improving business, profitability and efficiency. Estes said the relationship with Flint Hills Technical College could become truly symbiotic: MAMTC has a lot of contacts and ways it can assist industries while the technical college can offer its customized training to the company’s clients.
“Who knows? It could expand from here,” Estes said. “We feel like we’ve developed a pretty natural fit.”
The college and MAMTC began discussing an agreement in April.
The Business and Industry Center is a clearinghouse for training and continuing education that the college sometimes calls its R&D sector. Steve Harmon, its director, also called it an example of “Just-In-Time Learning,” with workers able to learn skills as they need them.
“We want to work with business and industry throughout the community and find out what do we need to do,” college President Dean Hollenbeck said during a luncheon ceremony at the technical college. “Our programs are continually evolving.”
Following the lunch, participants toured Sauder Custom Fabrication, Glendo and Detroit Diesel. Executives from all of them touted the values of a technical education and an industrial job,
“There are positions at our company where tech outearns college handily,” said D.J. Glaser, the head of Glendo. “It’s the chance to learn a skill that’s more portable than anything in any college.
“But stay in Kansas!” he added, drawing a laugh.