Augusta Technical College President Jermaine Whirl updated students and the public with plenty of items Tuesday at the Patrick Center for the school’s State of the College Address.
Whirl touted the school’s rebranding, its recent funding and various initiatives, some which overlap with its capital projects. Among those, Whirl mentioned the college’s partnership with the Downtown Development Authority of Augusta to launch a small business incubator.
“We will have shared resource space,” said Whirl about the microenterprise center, funded by $2 million in congressional funds gathered with support from Sen. Raphael Warnock. Whirl said the school is currently negotiating with the owners of a property on Broad Street where it aims to build a 12,000 square foot space to “become the hub for entrepreneurship in Augusta.”
“We will have a number of continuing education classes that really will cover a gamut of things from QuickBooks and sales to marketing and social media to business law,” Whirl said.
A 81,000 square foot “advanced manufacturing facility” is one of the school’s major capital projects, Whirl said. An investment of about $44 million, the center would be equipped for training in mechatronics, computerized numeric control machining, programmable logic controllers and robotics.
The school is planning to build off of Interstate 20, “our biggest interstate thoroughfare in the region,” Whirl said, for its visibility and to attract manufacturers.
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“People can see this off the interstate, number one and number two, it helps the governor to easily tell the story, ‘Yes, the Augusta Region has a training facility, go put your company there,’” he said.
The school has recently submitted for a $2.5 million grant from the Economic Development Administration to put toward a truck driver training campus in Thomson, the first phase in an expansion project that Whirl said is also to include a 50,000 square foot supply chain automation center.
Augusta Tech is certainly trying to put the Augusta area ahead in manufacturing, according to Whirl. The school recently sent its vice president of Economic Development, Rebecca Stout, to visit the headquarters of Aurubis in Germany to learn more about its apprenticeship model. Aurubis broke ground on its Augusta copper smelting plant earlier this year.
Whirl said Augusta Tech is in the process of several initiatives to poise itself as means to for major manufacturers to take root in Augusta.
“They need 1,000-plus people, eventually,” said Whirl about the college’s dealings with Aurubis. “And so we wanted to learn exactly what it is they need, so we can provide that same exact training.”
Whirl said the school has coordinated similar arrangements with recycling company PureCycle, which also broke ground on a plant in Augusta Industrial Park this year; and Japanese company Denkai, which is planning on building a facility in the area.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
