Beginning this fall, Waubonsee Group School welcomed college students to its new Technical Training Heart, a $60 million constructing at its Sugar Grove campus.
Waubonsee has lengthy provided coaching for careers in automotive and welding applied sciences, however the brand new facility is supposed to present college students pursuing levels and certificates more room for the hands-on coaching that makes up a lot of their packages, based on Waubonsee Group School President Brian Knetl.
The brand new facility, situated simply off of Route 47, is the primary new constructing to be constructed at Waubonsee in 10 years, Waubonsee Group School Board President Rebecca Oliver stated at a gap celebration for the middle on Friday.
“It is vitally actually elevating the visibility of the faculty,” Oliver stated. “This constructing is elevating the bar for profession and technical schooling.”
The opening drew a crowd from the faculty and the group, together with quite a few native elected officers — like U.S. Rep. Invoice Foster, D-Naperville; state Sen. Linda Holmes, D-Aurora; state Rep. Barbara Hernandez, D-Aurora; and Kane County Board Chair Corinne Pierog.
The brand new heart is residence to the faculty’s Automotive Service Know-how, Automotive Collision and Refinishing Know-how and Welding Know-how packages, which embody each affiliate’s diploma packages and certificates packages. It has school rooms and labs with issues like welding cubicles and paint cubicles, in addition to workplace house and customary house.
The packages being housed within the constructing aren’t new, Knetl defined on Friday on the opening celebration for the middle.
“They’re so in style that we would have liked to search out methods to broaden our packages,” Knetl stated.
So, just a few years again, officers with the faculty started discussing the concept that in the end grew to become the Technical Training Heart, he defined.
“Our packages have been robust for a very very long time, and we’ve had actually nice college, however … our areas simply weren’t satisfactory sufficient … and sufficiently big to permit for extra college students to be in there,” Knetl stated.
Knetl defined that, earlier than, the areas for engaged on vehicles have been smaller, and unfold out throughout the campus.
Half of the $60 million undertaking is being funded by the faculty’s reserve funds, whereas the opposite half is being funded by issuing bonds, based on the faculty. The board beforehand determined to allocate a portion of its annual state funding for the constructing, that means there is no such thing as a extra property tax levy for repaying the bonds.
Knetl stated this system is meant to answer each elevated scholar curiosity in careers in trades and to demand for professionals certified to do automotive and welding jobs.
“The trades are a really wanted, viable and good careers to enter,” Knetl stated. “I believe increasingly college students are discovering that, inside a 12 months (or) two years, they’ll earn a level, they’ll earn a certificates and exit into the world and earn a terrific residing doing one thing that they love.”
Public two-year schools specializing in vocational and commerce packages noticed enrollment will increase of just about 20% from the spring of 2020 to the spring of 2025, based on the Nationwide Scholar Clearinghouse Analysis Heart. That is taking place as total school enrollment for 18- to 24-year-olds was down in 2022 in comparison with a decade earlier, based on knowledge from the Nationwide Heart for Training Statistics.
The packages at Waubonsee additionally supply college students some flexibility, Knetl identified, by permitting them to earn certificates and be a part of the workforce earlier than finishing an affiliate’s diploma. College students may also “construct and scaffold” the certificates packages right into a full affiliate’s diploma, “to allow them to sort of work at it little by little” whereas concurrently working within the trade.
There have been 751 college students enrolled at Waubonsee within the automotive service, collision and refinishing and welding packages as of this fall, based on a spokesperson for the faculty. That’s a roughly 100-student enhance from final 12 months, largely as a result of an enlargement of the faculty’s welding enrollment. The packages ranged from roughly 94% to 100% capability this 12 months.
Present scholar Irene Isitt, 18, stated she at all times appreciated vehicles. However she didn’t essentially plan to pursue a profession fixing them till she went on a subject journey to the Indian Valley Vocational Heart and bought to see its store.
“I identical to fixing issues,” Isitt stated. “I hate being in a classroom, so that is wonderful.”
Now, just a few weeks into her first 12 months at Waubonsee, the place she’s working towards an affiliate’s diploma and is at present a part of a collision and refinishing cohort, she’s refinishing two fenders and the hood of a automotive. To date, her cohort has made dents within the automotive components and stuffed them. Quickly, they’ll discover ways to prime and paint them.
The collision and refinishing program has a number of sections, however the school has plans so as to add extra sooner or later, per the faculty spokesperson.
For the packages, the faculty additionally has a fleet of vehicles for college kids to work on, however additionally they have alternatives for these in the neighborhood to usher in their private autos to have them fastened up by college students — for simply the worth of the supplies, based on Ramiro Cervantes, Isitt’s trainer and an teacher of auto collision and refinishing expertise.
College students within the cohort program will get to work on the precise vehicles subsequent semester, Cervantes stated.
The middle additionally consists of new expertise, defined Knetl. He stated the faculty had the prospect to “actually dream about what college students is not going to solely want now, however want sooner or later,” pointing to, for instance, new applied sciences for hybrid and electrical autos.
The middle additionally has a PPG MoonWalk system, a software that scans vehicles to determine and blend paint colours to match them extra intently, Cervantes defined. With out it, the matching and mixing must be accomplished by hand, and can be extra topic to human error.
Isitt is hoping to color vehicles someday, she stated. And she or he’s trying to begin working in a store inside the subsequent 12 months.
However Cervantes, who stated he himself graduated from this system at Waubonsee after which spent years working in retailers, had lengthy wished to show on the school.
“To sort of give again,” he stated.
However, whereas the house is totally different and the expertise is ever-changing, a lot concerning the packages stay the identical, Cervantes stated.
“It’s nonetheless Waubonsee,” he stated on Friday. “Folks make Waubonsee.”
mmorrow@chicagotribune.com
