By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
A St. Joseph manufacturer that contributed early to the Convergent Technology Alliance Center under construction on the Missouri Western State University campus will be recognize at the facility.
Missouri Western has named the central shop area the Gray Manufacturing Workshop Bay.
Missouri Western President Elizabeth Kennedy says the name recognizes the $500,000 contribution given to get the project off the ground.
“The startup really from Pete Gray from Gray Manufacturing has meant so much to this project. It got the ball rolling,” Kennedy tells reporters after a news conference announcing the naming. “And we really believe at Missouri Western that this is going to be a game changer for our community for our region; super excited.”
Missouri Western will operate the center in partnership with North Central Missouri College of Trenton. Its president, Lenny Klaver, says his students are eager for the center to open.
“We do offer some of these programs right now in Savannah on a smaller scale,” Klaver tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “We have some high school students already in the pipeline that will be looking forward to coming down here for some hands-on experience when they get into our programs.”
The center, known as CTAC, will train high-skilled labor for the increasingly sophisticated manufacturing jobs in St. Joseph and throughout the Midland Empire.
Gray Manufacturing CEO Pete Gray says the center should open the eyes of high school students to the openings in today’s high-tech manufacturing sector.
“They are so different than what they used to be. Manufacturing is not what it used to be. The opportunities for students that would come into our workforce is that they have upward mobility,” Gray tells reporters. “Many of our higher level managers out on our shop floor are previous students that came here and learned as interns and worked their way up through the shop and are now in leadership roles.”
Gray says the training the center will provide is sorely needed in the area as businesses in the manufacturing sector continue to struggle to find qualified employees.
Kennedy says the center will provide the workforce training the area needs.
“A facility like CTAC is going to be the only one like it within about a 50-mile radius I believe,” Kennedy says. “This will be not only an attractor for students and for other businesses who might be looking at the region, at our community, to say if we don’t have the workforce, well now we have a facility that can provide it.”
CTAC received private donations as well as local, state, and federal funding to complete the financing of the $12 million project. Construction is expected to be completed this summer with classes beginning in the fall.
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