Tech Training Center Gets Boost

The concept of a community college technology training center moved forward Thursday as discussion centered on a fast track for funding.

Charles A. Taylor, chancellor and chief executive for the Community Colleges of Spokane, told a group of 45 key public- and private-sector representatives that “we’ve gone beyond the `ifs’ and `maybes.’ It’s clear we will have a center; we can’t wait another year.”

Taylor added: “You can’t leave the (community college board) room unless you sign up for a committee” to work on the project.

The project, tentatively titled Inland Northwest Center for Advanced and Emerging Technology, would be patterned after Bellevue Community College’s successful Northwest Center for Emerging Technology. The Bellevue facility, started by a Microsoft alum, trains information technology certified workers using a business-education-government collaborative model.

National Science Foundation grants help pay for the Bellevue center. Taylor said the deadline is May 20 to submit a concept for a Spokane project to the NSF. A detailed proposal would be due Oct. 19, he said.

The tech training center, introduced at a Feb. 8 Symposium session, is envisioned by some as a campus connected to a business park to maximize the interaction of education and business.

Staffers at high-tech companies could teach classes, and instructors and students could work, or at least observe, at the businesses.

Spokane School District 81 Superintendent Gary Livingston said the area is losing its best and brightest high school math and science students to schools and jobs elsewhere. The community needs to be able to keep some of those top students here, or at least encourage them to come home to work at some point in their careers, he said.

Spokane Mayor John Talbott told the group: “One thing we really need to do is to convey the need for this project to 400,000 people (in Spokane) and to get them to buy in to the promise of the future.”

Taylor said an executive committee will meet in the next few weeks to craft a timeline.