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St. Louis Community College opens Center for Workforce Innovation, Aug. 29
The grand opening of St. Louis Community College’s new Center for Workforce Innovation will be 2:30-5 p.m. Monday, Aug. 29, at 3344 Pershall Road.
Located adjacent to the college’s Florissant Valley campus, the 32,000-square-foot CWI will serve more than 500 students annually and houses some of the college’s newest. It will feature most cutting-edge workforce training programs, including several that were targeted in the Training for Tomorrow Initiative, as well as other innovative instructional spaces and a public access computing center.
One of the CWI’s centerpiece programs is the St. Louis Aerospace Institute. It began as a pre-employment program for Boeing, delivering technical instruction in aerospace structures and mechanical/electrical systems. A grant from the U.S. Department of Labor laid the groundwork to expand this program to the general aerospace industry cluster as well as establish composites material training capability. It also will include new composites fabrication and assembly labs.
As part of the Training for Tomorrow Initiative, the college has established an energy technician program that now will be located at the CWI. This program is part of STLCC’s “green” jobs strategy that includes renewable energy, energy efficiency and sustainable design and construction. The energy technician curriculum includes residential and commercial energy auditing, advanced building control systems with remote monitoring, aspects of commercial energy retrofits, and facilities management with a focus on energy efficiency. It also will integrate BPI and LEED certification standards.
STLCC received funding through the Missouri Department of Higher Education’s Broadband Technology Opportunities program to develop the CWI’s public access computing area. This center will have 25 stations that will be open to the public on a walk-in basis, and offer computer training classes to help prepare unemployed and underemployed workers develop skills needed for the 21st century work force.
The CWI also will offer industrial maintenance technician and programmable logic control programs to serve business and industry through customized curriculum. The CWI has general classroom space that can be expanded into a large multipurpose room, a computer classroom with 20 stations, conference room, staff offices and lounge-type area.
