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Owens Community College celebrates opening of $9.6 million Dana training center

Owens Community College officials opened the $9.6 million Dana Advanced Manufacturing Training Center doors to a majority of students with little fanfare last spring, but they made up for lost time Wednesday with a ceremony to celebrate the building project’s completion and showcase the facility’s new modernized features.

Crowded together under a canopy in front of the renovated building, area education, business, and elected leaders took turns praising the new facility and touting it as the area’s new premier resource for advanced manufacturing training.

With its polished floors, wood finishing, glass walls that showcase the equipment used inside the classrooms, and sleek “Owens red” aesthetic design, the 59,000-square-foot facility houses six skilled tech and training labs and allows Owens to offer skills, trade, and apprentice programs under one roof for the first time.

There, Owens officials say students now learn trades using the most up-to-date equipment to learn skills using computer-aided design; computer numerical control and manual machining; electrical; heating, ventilation and air conditioning; alternative energy; mechanical and pneumatics, and robotics and programmable logic controllers. There are also specialty areas such as computer labs, classrooms, and study areas.

James Kamsickas, chairman and chief executive officer of Dana Inc., which donated $1 million for the renovation project, said the training facility is needed now more than ever as recent estimates project 2.4 million manufacturing jobs will go unfilled between now and 2028.

With the training center, he said Owens will now be a central hub where students can receive cutting-edge training and have access to high-paying careers while area businesses will reap the benefits of an advanced workforce trained in their own backyard.

“This new training center is an investment in people — people who are critical to the work we do every day,” he said. “It will also help with the development of skilled workers and and bring people throughout the region to learn critical skills for both here, and northwest Ohio, and throughout the midwest.”

Angie Hayes, business development manager for the StaffWorks Group, a Toledo employment agency, said she is impressed with all the Dana center has to offer students and foresees her company benefiting from the high-quality stock of workers who graduate from Owens.

“It’s a great advantage for us because future applicants, if they leave here, they’ll have an awesome experience that will make our lives easy,” she said.

Posted By: Toledo Blade on October 6, 2021.  For more information, please click here to read the source article.

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