By Sean McManus
Staff Writer
It’s only been two months since the new Advanced Technology Center opened its doors to students at 401 State St. behind FCCJ’s Downtown Campus and they are already breaking ground on the next phase of a long-term project which the school hopes will make Jacksonville the premier high-tech training ground in the south, if not the nation.
“According to Yahoo!, FCCJ is now considered the second most ‘wired’ community college in the nation,” said Karen Austin, executive director of the ATC, who oversees the the day-to-day operations of a structure wrapped in 57 miles of data cabling and bulging with state-of-the art computers. Touchpads in the “smart” classrooms and where “smart” labs control everything from lights to robotic conveyor belts and are constantly sending signals back and forth to wireless access points hanging like stalactites from the ceiling in the hallways.
The new 75,000 square-foot building on State Street and the corporate alliances that feed it is the culmination of Phases 1 and 2. Phase 3 is a 45,000 square-foot structure being built directly behind the current building that will house a new transportation lab where car companies can host individual training seminars, and NAPA Auto Parts is building a collision center. Rooms at the ATC are left intentionally sparse so that industries can tailor the space to serve their specific needs.
The ATC is divided into four industry segments based on a study the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission conducted a few years ago about what industries synergized best with the city’s expansion goals. Those are advanced manufacturing, information technology, biotechnology and transportation technology.
Tom Pease, the automotive program manager for the transportation technology group, facilitates the training of the modern mechanic. Attracting both younger students who are interested in the automotive field as well as experienced car technicians who need to be reeducated on changes in how new cars operate, the ATC’s transportation technology arm was recently selected as one of the 10 best workforce development programs in the U.S.
From its base on the first floor of the ATC, the program called CATT (Coalition for Automotive and Truck Training), is a 16-week intensive class (including an internship) that prepares students to parlay skills into jobs at sponsoring dealerships or repair shops. Its curriculum was designed in conjunction with General Motors’ Auto Service Education Plan. The textbooks and training sessions, though, incorporate lessons from other alliance partners like Ford and Toyota, and local dealers like Frank Griffin, O’Steen, and Coggin.
“The goal is to compound hands-on technical skills with critical thinking skills to produce highly trained technicians,” explained Pease, who cited the increasingly technology-heavy nature of modern automotive systems.
Across the hall on the first floor are Dave Kier’s manufacturing labs. Kier, who spent 22 years in the Navy before joining an architectural firm doing electrical design, heads up the training and operations to train students for jobs in high-tech manufacturing.
Starting with a $200,000 capitalization grant from the state and with equipment donated from local businesses, Kier has created a water treatment facility where FCCJ bottles its own water, called “Wave.
In Kier’s Industry Electrical Maintenance Program, students can earn a manufacturing degree in about two years and become proficient in every kind of manufacturing and training for jobs at places like Anheuser-Busch, Maxwell House, Bacardi, Vistakon, International Paper and Jefferson-Smurfitt. The bottling facility is identical to the one at Anheuser-Busch. A packaging machine for the electricity and implementation classes was donated by Vistakon. Kier said that he sees potential in partnering with engineering programs from schools like UNF to produce students with a total literacy of design and manufacturing.
Throughout the ATC, multi-purpose rooms with multi-media capabilities are ready to be rented out by businesses for anything from a board meeting to a high-tech sales meeting. In the west wing, Evan Kuharich runs the electrical and instrumentation technology program (ENI). He is currently in the process of working with the AIM Center in Dayton, Ohio to update his curriculum to teach computer-integrated manufacturing.
Upstairs, the information technology arm of the ATC starts with the rooms where FCCJ hosts one of seven certified Cisco Systems training facilities in the nation, which doubles as a training center for the people who do the training. Cheryl Schmidt is pointing to a digital image projected at the front of a class of what Eileen Ward, the executive director of the Technology Institute of the South, calls “the $200 an hour guys.”
These are techies from as far as Washington state and Kentucky who have come to the ATC to learn how to develop, install and fix Cisco routers and other products. Schmidt and Professor Ernie Friend run the Cisco Academy, which FCCJ hopes will lead to other partnerships with premier technology companies. They recently signed on Sun Microsystems for a similar venture; other projects, she said, are in the works.
The Network Engineering program continues around the corner with the “router room” where color-coded computers train students on how to connect computers to each other and to central hubs. There are plans to increase the capabilities of this program to include telephony, telecommunications and the newly popular data security. While the ATC houses a lot of the hardware side of technology training, other buildings in the Downtown campus and at the South campus compliment the programs with courses that teach specific software applications. The second floor of the ATC also houses all the computers for the Automated Design (CAD) labs as well as the Computer Engineering Technology lab.
“All of this is with the aim of making the ATC, FCCJ and Jacksonville the premier technology training locating destination venue in the area,” added Ward, who serves as a liaison between FCCJ and companies who want to train here, “because that’s the way you attract high-paying jobs to Jacksonville”
Also in the works is the biotechnology arm of the ATC, which right now is “virtual,” meaning that there the labs to actually perform biological testing are not yet complete. The ATC is having conversations with biotech organizations near the University of Florida to develop a curriculum. They hosted a biotech expert, Dr. Shelly Shuster from UF, as a speaker recently.
“Eventually we want to be able to offer an Associates’ degree that will prepare people for jobs in biotech,” said Austin. That could also lead to scenarios where students could finish a bachelor’s degree at the University of Florida in the same field.