Mark Manuel
After multiple budget cycles looking to get a planned advanced manufacturing training center in Georgetown funded, Bluegrass Community and Technical College (BCTC) officials applauded Gov. Steve Beshear’s proposed allotment of $24 million to build the facility.
But that doesn’t mean they are considering it a done deal.
“Until the 11th hour, nobody knows what’s going to come out of the budget,” said Mark Manuel, BCTC’s vice president of workforce and institutional development, about the facility, which has been requested previously. The push for the center has been bolstered by the Bluegrass Economic Advancement Movement (BEAM).
The Georgetown facility would serve to train future employees of existing and hoped-for manufacturers in the area that BEAM — led by Lexington Mayor Jim Gray and Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer — has identified as a key aspect of a 21st century economy in the commonwealth.
“The Georgetown building is wonderful, because that’s an economic driver around BEAM and manufacturing, which is still the largest segment around Kentucky,” Manuel said. If built, the building would serve as a direct pipeline for high-demand workers.
Workforce Training
While those in programs at the facility, which has been operating on a small scale on the campus of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky, would eventually be hired by companies like Toyota, their suppliers and other manufacturers, Manuel said the skills being taught are not a substitute for the specific training an employer would do.
“We’re doing baseline skills that they could take anywhere, not just to Toyota,” he said. “In fact, [in] the program we have there now, which will be moved into that new facility if it’s funded, we’ve got 12 different manufacturers working there, and they’re all sponsoring students or giving them internships.”
The program, like many others within BCTC, is meant as much to give a lift to the current workforce as it is to educate the future one.
Economic Bellwether
Enrollment at the school can be viewed as a bellwether for the economy at large, Manuel said.
“If you’re going to bet on the economy, you ought to watch what our enrollments are,” Manuel said. “Our best year was probably the worst year of the economy, because people aren’t finding jobs [and need a boost in their skills], or Mom and Dad [can’t afford] a four-year [college] this year. Then when the economy gets better — and this has happened across the country, it isn’t just us — community college enrollment tends to go down,” he said.
One aspect that has remained constant is a shrinking budget allocation for operations at the college.
Getting past being everything to everyone
“Higher ed has not taken the cuts that everybody else has. There are agencies that have taken really bad cuts, and we haven’t been cut nearly as bad,” he said. “Part of that’s healthy, because we have to look at ourselves and say, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t be doing some of the things we’re doing,’ because a community college tends to want to be everything to everybody.”
In addition, while the governor has proposed allocating money to build the new facility in Georgetown, no money has been proposed to operate it, as has been the case with capital projects around the state in recent years.
“Getting that building with nothing to run it on and getting the 2.5 percent budget cut means we have to look around and say, ‘What don’t we do to make that work?’” Manuel said.
But Manuel admits that might not be the worst thing for the school to do.
“It means we have to move resources around to do that, and it probably means another community will not have that [type of program], and we’ll have to centralize things. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just something you’ve got to do to make it work,” he said. “What’s the old saying: Necessity is the mother of all invention. So we’ll figure a way of doing it.”
About Mark Manuel
Age: 49
Hometown: Martinsburg, WVa.
Education: bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from West Virginia University and an MBA from the University of Kentucky.
Title: vice president of workforce and institutional development at BCTC
Previous Title: director, community and economic development at BCTC