Rochester, NH – Great Bay Community College (GBCC) will offer two new advanced manufacturing certificates, a Certificate in Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) Programming and an Industrial Maintenance Certificate, beginning in January 2020. Both programs will be offered at the Great Bay Community College Rochester Campus and are designed for professionals looking to enhance their skills and advance their careers in manufacturing.
CMM programmers and maintenance technicians remain in high demand due to the sophisticated expertise needed for these positions. The average salary for a CMM programmer is over $60,000 and for a maintenance technician is over $43,000 according to glassdoor.com.
“Our goal at Great Bay is to partner with local employers to develop courses – like the CMM Programming and the Industrial Maintenance Certificate – that align with the workforce needs to help fill these gaps, and make it as easy as possible for people to gain skills quickly that can be used right away on the job,” said Debra Mattson, advanced manufacturing program director at GBCC. “In New Hampshire, projections show about 80 percent of open manufacturing jobs will be to replace employees who are aging out of the field.”
The labor shortage across the manufacturing industry is expanding because of the shift in the required skillsets as a result of advanced technology. According to Deloitte’s “2018 Manufacturing Skills Gap Study,” there will be a 2.4 million national worker shortage in manufacturing over the next decade with an anticipated $2.5 trillion risk to the U.S. GDP if those jobs aren’t filled.
“The shift in advanced manufacturing toward automation hasn’t eliminated the need for people, it’s changed the necessary skill sets,” said Mattson. “As manufacturing evolves and companies rely more on automation, professionals will need to be able to set up, fine tune and maintain automated systems.”
To ensure students are work-ready, GBCC has collaborated with local employers and professionals with decades of experience to develop programs that meet the industry’s current and projected demand. GBCC combines classroom education with hands-on experience through their manufacturing labs, which house equipment and machinery commonly used in the industry to gain personal knowledge of required maintenance, troubleshooting and repairs.
Prior to enrolling in the CMM Programming Certificate program, students must be able to read technical drawings and operate a coordinate measure machine. After completing the CMM Programming Certificate, students will have the skills necessary to program these advanced machines. Upon completion of the Industrial Maintenance Certificate program, students will be able to provide preventative and corrective maintenance on industrial equipment, tools and machines.
Students will receive a Certificate of Completion through GBCC’s Business Training Center for both programs, which are non-credit bearing. To learn more about the CMM Programming Certificate and the Industrial Maintenance Certificate, contact Debra Mattson at [email protected], 603-427-7732 or visit greatbay.edu.
Great Bay Community College
Great Bay Community College is one of seven colleges in the Community College System of New Hampshire, offering thirty-nine associate degree and certificate programs in Claremont, Keene, Lebanon, and Online. Financial Aid and Scholarships are available. The seven community colleges in the system are committed to working with businesses throughout the state to train and retain employees to develop a robust workforce across all sectors and embraces the “65 by 25 Initiative,” which calls for 65% of NH citizens to have some form of post-secondary education by 2025 to meet future workforce demands.
