AND THE WINNER IS ... Award highlights MCC initiatives
Building a workforce that can compete in today’s technology savvy world is one of the important factors in keeping talent here in the Omaha metropolitan area. One of the goals Metropolitan Community College has been pursuing is helping the community with this workforce development objective. To do this, the College has engaged in initiatives that touch all ages and all walks of life—whether it’s the BringITOn Challenge, a competition centered on high school students finding complex solutions for area companies, or constructing the new Center for Advanced and Emerging Technology on the Fort Omaha Campus. These actions are what helped MCC receive the annual Community Builder of the Year award, an honor given by the AIM Institute during its annual Tech Celebration Awards. AIM Institute’s Tech Celebration honors achievements of tech-oriented individuals and organizations who have made a positive impact on the community. The award also
recognizes the College’s Workforce Innovation Division and their efforts to make Omaha competitive regionally and nationally. Workforce Innovation Division’s Tom Pensabene accepted the award on behalf of MCC at the event, held at the Holland Performing Arts Center in downtown Omaha.
The Center for Advanced and Emerging Technology is “more than just a building at MCC.” Being recognized as a tech leader doesn’t come without creative vision. CAET exemplifies that. New technologies and start-ups are creating new jobs and transforming current jobs every day. Industries, technologies and job requirements are evolving at breakneck speeds. The academic building will co-locate with industry partners to move forward together, test new technologies,
Center for Advanced and Emerging Technology
develop new products and continually train and re-train our workforce. Pensabene describes it as more than a “new building at MCC”; this will be the community’s advanced technology center—a flexible learning center that attracts, spawns and grows Omaha businesses, training students through technologies and bringing learning to life through realworld research and development. Together, MCC faculty, students and industry partners will learn, test, apply and develop new technologies. Both a driver and a consumer of new technologies, CAET will be a collaborative working and learning space that really earns the label “synergistic.” Corporate exhibit space, entrepreneurial production labs and economic development partners will be hallmarks of the new center. Students will not only build skills with industry-standard technologies, they will work with emerging technologies, moving area industries forward. The Center for Advanced and Emerging Technology is set to be completed by fall quarter 2017.