Last week, Greater Owensboro broke ground on Owensboro Community and Technical College’s Advanced Manufacturing Center Phase II. It was a groundbreaking 20 years in the making. It was staggering to think that it really had been that long since our community first discussed the need for an Advanced Technology Center. In the 1990s, we realized that our economy was changing and that most jobs that could feed a family would require higher skills. So we can began planning and finding ways to make this happen.
In usual Owensboro fashion, we mixed some help from the state, help from our forward-thinking local governments and help from our local business community. We did it in phases in order to make it happen. In short, we were innovative, we were determined to get it done and we tactically patient. And that is Owensboro.
The groundbreaking crowd was a cross-section of our community. Small business owners, bankers, utility managers, leaders in the trades and craft sectors, students, educators, manufacturers, four-year college leaders and more.
We all have come to expect that kind of teamwork and broad community support for our community college. That is really something that is special about Owensboro and how we do business with one another.
The programs that will be offered in our Phase II center are critical to our regional economy. As Judge Executive Al Mattingly said, not every student learns the same. Many of us learn much more effectively by doing. This facility and the equipment and programs housed in it, will give our young people — and the people in our community who have found themselves in their adult lives forced to start a new path — the opportunity for better skills, better wages and a better life.
By Candance Brake President and CEO Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce