SWCID Workforce Center Opens
Monday, 27 April 2009
By STEVE REAGAN
Staff Writer
Workfoce training students at SouthWest Collegiate Institute for the
Deaf will no longer have to hit the road to take classes.
Friday ribbon-cutting ceremonies highlighted the opening of the new
training center on the SWCID campus which will soon be home to about
50 students taking trade classes.
While some equipment remains to be either moved in or purchased,
college officials plan to start holding classes in welding, automobile
mechanics and building trades. Both practical labs and classrooms will
be housed in the building.
This will prove a welcome break for students who have, until now, had
to split time between SWCID, located on the site of the old Webb Air
Force Base in west Big Spring and the Howard College campus on the
east end of town.
The $1.15 million building took about six months to complete. Money
for the project was appropriated by the Texas Legislature.
“We’re still buying equipment for the building,” said Howard
College President Dr. Cheryl Sparks. “But we plan to have it fully
operational by the start of the fall semester.”
Sparks said during June groundbreaking ceremonies for the building
that it is the culmination of years of planning by college officials.
“We’ve been working on this for more than six years,” Sparks said
at the time. “We first submitted a request with the Legislature
three sessions ago. Each session after that, we presented increasingly
scaled-down proposals until it was finally approved.”
Friday, Sparks said the building was a culmination of a years-long
campus improvement project.
“We started our (master plan) project in the early 1990s, based on
interest from the Texas Legislature to finance some of these
programs,” Sparks said. “Since that time, we’ve been able to
renovate some buildings and, in other cases, construct new ones …
the Workforce Training Center was the last building we needed to
complete to finish our overall strategic building plan for SWCID.”
Officials anticipate at least 50 students will take advantage of the
center’s services this next semester and Sparks hopes that number is
merely the beginning.
“We now have the physical facilities in place; now, we’re going to
increase our marketing efforts,” Sparks said. “One of our goals is
that we want to develop an adult basic education program at SWCID.
We’re working with state and federal authorities to secure funds for
that.”
Contact Staff Writer Steve Reagan at 263-7331 ext. 234 or by e-mail
at [email protected]
Source: http://www.bigspringherald.com/content/view/167580/60/