The National Institute for Metalworking Skills and the Gene Haas Foundation are instituting a program to help secondary and post-secondary schools prepare more students for careers in precision manufacturing. The GHF-NIMS Credentialing Scholarship Program will provide grants to eligible institutions in order to develop quality technical programs that will provide students with industry-recognized credentials and foundational skills.
The Scholarship Program is launching with a $100,000 contribution from the GHF.
Details about how schools can apply for a GHF-NIMS Credentialing Scholarship is available online.
“With this program, we hope to support more high schools and community colleges as they build high-quality programs that use NIMS standards and credentials in order to deliver the most relevant and innovative training,” according to a statement by the Gene Haas Foundation Board. “This provides our country’s manufacturers an excellent workforce.”
The National Institute for Metalworking Skills (NIMS) was established by metalworking trade associations to develop and maintain an American workforce that is globally competitive. It sets skills standards, certifies individual skills against the standards, and accredits training programs that meet NIMS quality requirements.
The Gene Haas Foundation was formed in 1999 by Haas Automation founder Gene Haas, and supports manufacturing education programs among its charitable causes, and also provides scholarship funding for students to attend colleges that teach machining-based skills.
News of the scholarship program was announced at the 2014 SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference in Kansas City, where more than 6,000 career and technical education students engaged in competitions covering 99 different trade, technical and leadership fields.
The SkillsUSA competitors in Precision Machining Technology, CNC Milling and CNC Turning programs will be the first to participate in the GHF-NIMS Credentialing Scholarship Program. They will receive scholarships to earn NIMS’ Level I Machining credentials.
“There are an estimated 99,500 projected job openings for machinists and 117,100 projected job openings for industrial maintenance technicians nationally through 2020,” explained NIMS executive director Jim Wall.
“We are proud to be working with the Gene Haas Foundation to help schools prepare more young people with skills and credentials they need to succeed in these in-demand jobs.”
