All students guaranteed employment
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (May 12, 2017) — Jefferson Community & Technical College’s inaugural Advanced Manufacturing Technician Program (AMT) has 10 graduates. All 10 students have full-time jobs waiting for them and they’re graduating with little-to-no student loan debt.
AMT is sponsored by the Greater Louisville Chapter of the Kentucky Federation for Advanced Manufacturing Education (KY FAME), a group of area manufacturing companies taking action to fill the pipeline of mid-skill manufacturing workers, which is critical to the region’s large manufacturing industry.
The two-year AMT apprentice-style program will have graduates employed at sponsor employers: GE Appliances, Clariant Corporation, Paradise Tomato Kitchen, Inc., Precision Metal Works, and Atlas Machine & Supply, Inc.
“The AMT program is essential to growing a skilled manufacturing workforce that will not only help support the urgent needs of our current manufacturing base but will help attract new manufacturers to our local communities,” said Kent Suiters, Greater Louisville KY FAME president and GE Appliances Learning and Initiatives leader. “The AMT program will help open the door to employers who can offer these graduates great career opportunities in the fast-paced, high-tech, collaborative manufacturing field.”
A 2015 study by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute estimates that two million of the 3.4 million manufacturing jobs expected to become available in the next decade will go unfilled due to a gap between the skills manufacturers require and those of the current available workforce.
Greater Louisville KY FAME launched the AMT program with education partner JCTC in 2015 as one of its first actions after forming in 2014 due to the member companies’ common interest in having industry-led responses and solutions to the workforce crisis by exposing high school students to careers in the vibrant manufacturing field. That work has since been expanded to include education at the middle school level.
Students who participate in the AMT program work toward an associate degree in Applied Science in Advanced Manufacturing Technology at Jefferson Community & Technical College. They attend class and participate in lab work for two days a week and work for a sponsor company at a competitive wage the other three days.
Current enrollment is 37 students and an incoming class of 24 has been recruited from area high schools.
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