Meridian Community College receives the Gene Haas Foundation Scholarship

Special thanks, was expressed in students and faculty members of the Precision Manufacturing and Machining department at Meridian Community College when the Gene HAAS foundation scholarship awarded in the amount of $16,000 was given to the department.

Hugh Sims, sales engineer for Haas says a demand is needed for machinist.

“I think the last numbers we had were somewhere around 62% of machinist they are 45 or older so they’re going to be retiring within the next 15, 20 years and there’s going to be a void there and we’re trying to fill that void before it gets too bad.”

Brian Warren, the Industrial Tech and Division chair for Meridian Community College says he believes M-C-C’ Precision Machine and Engineering Technology is one of the schools that was chosen from its competitive hands on program.

“M-C-C was chosen based on our high enrollment and high job placement we’ve also had skills USA competition since 2015 we’ve won all CNC competitions in the state, this past summer we had two students place fourth in the nation for CNC Millen and CNC technician.”

According to Warren, the manufacturing industry is one well-paid profession to be a part of.

“ When a student finishes this program they can go and work at Aerospace, they can go and work in the automotive tool and die, they can go and work in medical manufacturing among many other categories a lot of people will be shocked to realize that we have students in the Meridian area earning well in the 60 to 80 thousand a year.”