[R]ANDOLPH CENTER — Gov. Peter Shumlin visited the campus of Vermont Technical College on Monday to highlight two state funded projects.
Vermont Technical College will be the site of the new Vermont Agriculture and Environmental Lab. In addition, the state is helping to pay for an upgrade to the college’s current engineering and technology lab in Morrill Hall.
Dan Smith, president of Vermont Tech, has been “like a dog with a bone” in getting this opportunity for the college, Shumlin said.
Tropical Storm Irene wiped out the previous agricultural and environmental lab located in the Waterbury Office Complex. Since 2011, the state has temporarily used a lab in the Hills building at UVM.
The VTC lab will cost $25 million and will bring 30 full-time and 15 part-time jobs to the region. It is slated for completion by June 2018.
The state will use the lab for air and water quality monitoring.
Shumlin pushed for the Randolph Center location for the lab, even though there was pressure to build it in Chittenden County.
The second project will upgrade the current facilities of Vermont Technical College in two phases. The first phase is an appropriation of $1 million in state funding toward upgrading the lab which should be completed by fall of 2015, Smith said. The second phase — an upgrade of the engineering and technology labs — would move forward if the college can match a $500,000 challenge grant by fiscal year 2017.
Amanda Chaulk, director of marketing and communications at Vermont Tech, said a quarter of the money is being used to update the electrical engineering technology and the rest is being used for an upgraded mechanical engineering lab and equipment at the Williston and Randolph labs.
Jeb Spaulding, chancellor of the Vermont State Colleges system and Shumlin’s former secretary of the Agency of Administration, said some people questioned the Randolph location for the lab and upgrades for the engineering labs, but Shumlin supported the projects from the beginning.
“This is one more example of the momentum that’s been happening with Vermont Tech under the leadership of Dan (Smith) and his staff,” Spaulding said.
Smith said that the space they have to train their students should reflect the state-of-the-art facilities the students will find in the workplace and right now the college’s labs are “a little bit dated.” The upgrade will give students hands-on experience with industry-grade machinery, tools, and robotics now being used by Vermont companies such as PC Construction, IBM/Global Foundries, GE Aviation, GS Precision, NRG Systems, AllEarth Renewables, UTC, Hypertherm and the Vermont Agency of Transportation.
Shumlin said that Vermont Technical College is a key to creating jobs in Vermont. The state now has the fourth-lowest unemployment rate in the country, and the lowest on this side of the Mississippi River, he said. When Shumlin graduated from Buxton School in 1974, many of his classmates did not pursue higher education and had no trouble securing jobs. That’s no longer the case, he said.
“You better have training beyond high school or you will be sentencing yourself to a low wage job for life,” Shumlin said.
