Vincennes opens new industrial training lab in Jackson County
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Vincennes University cut the ribbon Thursday on its new industrial maintenance training lab at the Jackson County Learning Center to create a pipeline and address a need for more trained technicians.
The partnership is with the Jackson County Industrial Development Corporation, Jackson County Education Coalition and Seymour-Jackson County. The industry partners will offer specialized training to increase the number of skilled technicians needed in the county.
The 1,600-square-foot lab in Seymour will have four courses including basic electrical, basic mechanical, intermediate electrical, and intermediate mechanical.
Equipment available at the center includes AC/DC Electrical Systems, electric motor control with troubleshooting, electronic sensors, mechanical drives chains, belts and gears, pneumatics, hydraulics, motors with troubleshooting, bearings and lubricants, laser shaft alignment, vibration analysis and power and control electronics.
“With the large concentration of industry in Seymour-Jackson County and the surrounding area, the need for maintenance training was constantly mentioned as a need during our conversations with companies,” said Jim Plump, Jackson County industrial development corporation executive director, in a news release. “As we met to try and figure out how we could pull something like this together, the reputation of Vincennes University’s training programs made it an easy call to see if they could be our partner to offer this training. We are extremely excited about this partnership to help expand our workforce development efforts.”
The lab was funded using the state’s Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative, or READI, funds, which was a $500 million initiative to build up infrastructure, programs and quality of life projects around the state.