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Texas Workforce Commissioner Aaron Demerson adds his signature to the check for a $296,263 Jobs and Education for Texans grant Weatherford College received.

Texas Workforce Commissioner Aaron Demerson adds his signature to the check for a $296,263 Jobs and Education for Texans grant Weatherford College received.

Weatherford College received a $296,263 Jobs and Education for Texans grant from the Texas Workforce Commission to support career training in a check signing ceremony Wednesday, Aug. 3.

"We are grateful for the opportunity that the JET grant provides for our community as well as our businesses and students," said Dr. Bill Alexander, WC's program director for industrial automation technology. "Because of you, our community partners, we can build a workforce pipeline that increases student access, student support and student success."

This grant funding will help WC purchase and install earth-moving simulator equipment for the first line supervisors of construction trades and extraction workers program.

The simulators represent the use of a forklift, backhoe loader, hydraulic excavator and bulldozer which will enable students to experience cost-effective, real-life scenarios. The equipment funded through this grant will initially train 144 students and be used to prepare more students in the future through hands-on learning.

Following the ceremony, Alexander led a tour through the classrooms in the Emerging Technologies and Workforce building where the new equipment will help educate students for in-demand careers.

"This is about connecting people that have skills, talents, gifts and abilities with the people that need them. That is not as easy as it sounds sometimes," said community partner Riff Wright, founder and general manager for Radius HDD Tools. "Obviously we have trouble with the supply chain right now. We have inflation problems. We have regulation challenges. But the real problem that bubbles up to the top every time is labor."

WC President Tod Allen Farmer said grants like this are the "fuel that drive this mighty engine of economic development." And in a statement released Aug. 4, Governor Greg Abbott said these grants are part of the groundwork to continue developing a skilled and diverse workforce for generations.

"This grant will give students interactive and realistic hands-on training with construction-related simulators and drone equipment that will help fill positions in the high demand careers available in the construction industry," said TWC Commissioner Aaron Demerson.

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