The personnel at Pellissippi State have extensive backgrounds in industrial training and technical education. They have provided specialized training services to numerous area businesses and industries including Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa), North American Phillips (NAP), EG&G Instruments, Boeing Aerospace, Martin Marietta Energy Systems, and many others. Specialized training programs are developed when courses offered through the current academic programs do not meet the exact needs of the company because of competency, contents, time, format, or location.
Industrial training services include delivery implementation of training programs, as well as needs analysis and skills inventory development. The college has access to extensive technical training facilities with 100,000 square feet of classroom and lab space and millions of dollars worth of new sophisticated equipment at the Pellissippi Campus. Training is also provided on-site as needed.
For instructional support, Pellissippi State taps a vast resource of highly trained and knowledgeable instructors in the Oak Ridge/Knoxville area. If necessary, it brings in personnel from other parts of the country. The specialized training projects have ranged from long-term training such as the electrical apprenticeship program at Alcoa, to short-term, highly-specialized training courses such as a special microprocessor course for NAP, and a highly intensive CAD course for United Technologies. The success of these projects is demonstrated not only by the enhanced effectiveness and productivity of the employees involved, but also by the aggressiveness with which these same companies request additional services.
Pellissippi State has the ability to serve a wide variety of student audiences, including production and manufacturing staff, engineering and technical staff, and administrative and clerical staff. The college has designed and implemented pre-employment and employee-upgrading programs. Pellissippi State has been selected to provide training for new workers for Indian Head Industries, a major supplier of parts for GM's Saturn project. Its apprenticeship training program at Alcoa has provided a well-trained entry-level work force for the company.
At the technical level, Pellissippi State's training capabilities cover a broad spectrum of production and operation areas. In the area of electronics, the college offers course work and training in such specialties as instrumentation (including operation and data analysis), electronic equipment and system maintenance, power systems, computer and digital electronics, computer-aided circuit design and analysis, control systems, component and circuit testing and analysis, and communications and networks.
In the mechanical area, training can be provided in areas such as mechanical system design, robotics, computer-aided and computer-integrated manufacturing, precision measuring and analysis, materials science, machine operation, and shop skills.
Pellissippi State offers a wide range of courses in chemistry and chemical engineering technology. Subjects include basic and analytical chemistry, organic chemistry, unit operations, environmental chemistry and control, chemical engineering calculations, and materials and techniques of process control.
Quality Assurance has become an important area for the college. A special center there deals with tailored programs in quality assurance, particularly in statistical process control. Course work in the area of safety has been offered for degree and special industrial students and includes courses on materials handling, industrial safety, and many others.
A variety of courses and programs are available in the computer applications areas. Students are taught computer technology skills such as computer programming, word processing, data processing, database management, computer operations, and spreadsheets. Students use and have access to microcomputers and a mainframe system (VAX cluster). Computer resources are quite extensive at the institution, with five dedicated local area networks connecting over 120 PC's and advanced work stations into the fiber-optic-based network.
Through use of advanced facilities of the institution, special training programs can be offered for the senior-level technical staff and engineering staff of local industries. Topics such as advanced micro-electronics and advanced CAD and CAM can be addressed as a result of numerous consignments, donations and discounts offered by companies wishing to showcase their equipment in an applications-oriented environment.
The academic and training resources of Pellissippi State are extensive and can be tailored and used to serve almost any training need of industry. Pellissippi State's past experiences in providing technical training services has proven to be very effective in achieving the college's goals. The resources of the Pellissippi campus have allowed Pellissippi State to broaden its training capabilities, and the applied technology centers strengthen these capabilities. Pellissippi State Technical Community College is committed to serving the industrial community by meeting its educational and training needs.