Kirkwood has partnerships with Clipper Windpower and ACCIONA Windpower
A U.S. Department of Labor official visiting Kirkwood Community College’s Cedar Rapids campus said partnerships between businesses and community colleges are what will help America’s economy improve.
Deputy Secretary of Labor Seth Harris toured Kirkwood’s advanced manufacturing and energy training facilities on Thursday, meeting with many of the college’s industry partners.
“Right here in Cedar Rapids we have outstanding examples of community colleges working with business,” said Harris. “The partnerships Clipper Windpower and ACCIONA Windpower have with the college are the exact thing President Obama is talking about when he says that we need to partner to help move the country forward.”
“At Kirkwood we are always leaning on our local industries to find out exactly what their needs are, what skills their employees are lacking, and what skills they will need in the future,” said Kirkwood President Mick Starcevich. “We want to make sure they not only have graduates to hire, but that those graduates have the exact skills that companies in our area demand, so we can help them grow our local economy.”
Kirkwood’s new Energy Production & Distribution Technologies program uses donated wind turbine components from Clipper Windpower in Cedar Rapids. Clipper and ACCIONA send employees to Kirkwood for training each week, and are looking forward to hiring the first group of students to graduate the program this spring.
“We’ve hired Kirkwood graduates from many of the various programs the college teaches,” said Robert Loyd, Clipper Windpower plant manager. “Since the students will be working on the turbine components we donated, and have experience in the new Clipper wind turbine the college purchased, they’ll already be very familiar with what we do.”
Both companies aren’t waiting until graduation to take advantage of the partnerships they have with the college. Through the State Energy Sector Partnership (SESP) training grant, Kirkwood Training and Outreach Services has been able to use more than $464,000 to train 40 incumbent workers, in addition to 90 students, for jobs in the energy sector.
“We need to continue to get training development grants that allow us to keep moving forward as an industry,” said Joe Baker, CEO of ACCIONA Windpower in West Branch. “We also need the production tax credit to be extended beyond this next year, or the wind industry in this country will crater.” He said that could cut the number of wind energy jobs in half, having an impact on job openings for Kirkwood graduates.
Deputy Secretary Harris said his department has no control over those tax credits, but that President Obama supports them. He said Obama also wants to two million workers to get retraining for more sustainable careers, and that Kirkwood is doing exactly what is needed to accomplish the goals set out in the State of the Union address.
“We need students to be college-ready and career-ready,” Harris said. “We need to remove the stigma of a technical education. Sometimes you can learn numbers and reading better, when it’s not in the context of a general classroom. These students here are learning very sophisticated equipment.”
The 39 students currently enrolled in the program will earn more than just a two-year degree when they graduate. They will also earn stackable credentials valued by the energy industry.
“We have 19 different nationally recognized credentials students in our Energy Production & Distribution Technologies program earn throughout their time with us,” said Industrial Technologies Dean Jeff Mitchell. “These credentials show companies that hire our students, that we are teaching the competencies they need to be successful in the work world.”
Students in the program learn solar energy and steam energy, in addition to wind energy. Many of the students who go through Kirkwood’s industrial technology programs have job placement before they graduate. Clipper and ACCIONA are not the only companies looking to hire this first group of Energy Production & Distribution Technologies students. Alliant Energy said it is in need of wind turbine installers for its growing wind energy needs.