Good things are happening with the Metropolitan Community College’s mission to boost career opportunities for all Kansas City youth, and LINC is readying to join the cause.
Since MCC-Penn Valley rehabbed a 100,000-square-foot building at 29th and Troost Avenue into its thoroughly modern Advanced Technical Skills Institute, the number of students seeking high tech careers is booming, said Lisa Bray, the Dean of Career Technical Education and the ATSI Site Administrator.
A team from LINC touring the facility listened to Bray as college students and teachers worked under the high-ceilinged work areas.
Since the fall of 2023, Bray said, overall student enrollment at ATSI has grown 13 percent, and the school’s minority student enrollment has grown by 40 percent.
The new location has been a critical part of that growth.
For many years, the technology campus had been located in the industrial area north of the Missouri River. The move to 29th and Troost put the campus at convenient bus lines. And it sits in the heart of the city surrounded by highly diverse neighborhoods.
The enrollment at the institute is ready to grow even more, Bray said, and it is working on increasing the size of its faculty to meet the demand.
The word is getting out, Bray said.
“If you come out of these programs with a certificate or a degree, there are great jobs . . . with family-sustaining wages,” Bray said.
Industry is reporting that available jobs still outnumber trained workers in the fields taught at ATSI, including computer-integrated machining and manufacturing; heating, ventilation, air-conditioning and refrigeration; building maintenance and construction; industrial electrical; instrumentation and controls; and more.
LINC wants to help open opportunities of ATSI education for students and families in LINC’s Caring Communities, said Caring Communities Director Sean Akridge.
LINC sees a chance to expand learning opportunities in its summer school programs and to team up with MCC to create mini summer camps at ATSI.
“It’s all about providing access and exposure to our students,” Akridge said.
In a debriefing after the tour, the LINC team talked of inviting middle school students to take part in something like a two-day immersive experience where they could get a chance to learn and build.
“We can get real-world learning into our program,” Akridge said, “and students can expand their horizon beyond their neighborhoods.”
MCC-Penn Valley has started creating mini-camps for middle and high school students, including sessions last summer with the Girl Scouts. Those programs, like what planners are imagining for cohorts of LINC students, mean to introduce students to the possibilities in technical trades, and give them a chance to try it out.
“They can see career opportunities they didn’t know were available,” Bray said. “We can give them exposure to those skill trades and that might trigger their interest.”
MCC-Penn Valley President Dr. Tammy Robinson — a LINC Commissioner — greeted the LINC team during its tour. She stopped them only briefly because, she said, she wanted the tour to carry on “so we can continue to blow your mind.”
