Industry leader Festo and the Alabama Community College System (ACCS) are opening doors for local high school STEM and CTE teachers and Alabama postsecondary instructors to complete NC3 training they can take back to their classrooms and labs.

The National Coalition of Certification Centers (NC3) is offering a weeklong regional “Train-the-Trainer” professional development event May 18-22 on the Enterprise State Community College campus in its new Center for Applied Technologies. Training includes hands-on lab experience focused on industry-recognized curriculum.

For high school STEM and CTE teachers, Festo, a leading producer of pneumatic and electrical automation technology and an NC3 partner, is offering scholarships to cover registration for four courses of the “Train-the-Trainer” event: Introduction to Mechatronics, Bionics 4 Education, Fundamentals of Electricity and Fundamentals of Fluid Power.

Alabama postsecondary instructors can attend the weeklong training for free thanks to Chief Workforce Development Officer Barry May and the ACCS.

Last year, ESCC hosted the regional training event on its Ozark campus, which saw one of the largest registrations since the training began. Division Chair of Applied Technologies/Mechatronics Instructor Aubri Hanson and ESCC Mechatronics Instructor Anthony Hanson led several of the courses during last year’s training and will return to the lab to teach courses during this year’s event as well.

Participants of this year’s regional “Train-the-Trainer” event can complete one of six training tracks:

1. Fundamentals of Electricity and Applied Industrial Motor Controls
2. Fundamentals of Fluid Power and Applied Fluid Power
3. Fundamentals of Sensors & PLC for Allen Bradley and Applied Smart Sensors & Applied PLC
4. Fundamentals of Industrial Wiring Systems
5. Fundamentals of Production Automation
6. Bionics 4 Education and Introduction to Mechatronics

Each track is embedded with NC3 Festo certifications. NC3 works with industry leaders – such as Festo, Greenlee, and Snap-On – to develop, implement and sustain industry-recognized portable certifications built on national skills standards. ESCC’s Mechatronics program utilizes NC3 curriculum to train students for their future careers.

Registration for this year’s “Train-the-Trainer” can be found on NC3’s website at nc3.net/training. For more information about scholarships for high school instructors, email Lisa Marshall, NC3 Festo Program Manager at lisa.marshall@nc3.net.