Mission College Awarded $125,000 to support Career Technical Education
Mission College has been awarded a Regional Equity and Recovery Partnerships grant
of more than $125,000 to support one of the college’s newest career technical education programs that trains students to be high-demand and highly paid technicians on Industrial Automation
in the Advanced Manufacturing industries encompassing Semiconductors, Electric Vehicles,
Aerospace, Biotechnology, and many other fields.
Advanced Manufacturing makes use of highly sophisticated equipment in their assembly
lines with robots and programmable logic controllers so that stations ‘talk’ to other
stations via the internet, cloud storage and big data analytical tools.
The statewide funding investments for RERP grants between local workforce development
board Regional Planning Units and community colleges such as Mission College intends
to connect workers most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic to high-quality jobs in
target and growth industry sectors.
Mission College will use the funds to prepare students for an Associate’s Degree and a Certificate of Achievement in Mechatronic Technology, a multi-disciplinary field of study that takes a hands-on approach covering the
most applicable topics in electrical, mechanical, software, and computer engineering.
Students will leave the program being able to work with technical, mechanical, or
diagnostic equipment; demonstrate written and verbal communication skills through
technical documentation and oral presentations; as well as troubleshoot and repair
systems and devices.
“Mechatronics combines the principles of mechanics, engineering, and computing to
create and improve new technology that contains artificial intelligence. This is the
forward-thinking academic programs that Mission College looks to deliver to all of
its students, so they are best prepared for the future,” Mission College President
Dr. Seher Awan said.
Members of Mission College’s Mechatronics Advisory Board, such as representatives
from Tesla and Applied Materials, are projecting strong future job demand in the key
occupation in this sector of electro-mechanical and mechatronics technologists and
technicians. From 2020 to 2025, the number of jobs in this occupation is forecast
to grow by four percent, according to an April 2022 analysis by the County Office
of Education. The COE is also projecting an undersupply of workers compared to the
demand for these jobs in the Bay region and in Santa Clara County.
Mission College will use some of the grant monies to especially focus its outreach
for this program on veterans and will leverage the institutional resources of the
college's Valor Veteran Center.
“
” said Dr. Clement Lam, Dean of Math, Science, and Engineering at Mission College. “We examined the economic needs in our community and saw that this field will make
a true difference in the lives of our students, especially our veterans.”
Mission College will be supported in this effort by the Bay Area Equity Collaborative, which includes the Bay Peninsula RPU and three other college partners, that will
work together to build bridges to accessible training and career opportunities in
industry sectors that will drive the global economy for years to come.
