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Several members of the state House Majority Policy Committee toured Pennsylvania College of Technology, Friday, as the final stop before returning to Harrisburg and trying to pass the Workforce Development Package -- a set of bills aimed at smoothly placing students in careers.
Representatives went through: Penn Tech's nursing program, which seeks to alleviate Pennsylvania's need for qualified nurses, and move nurses who have earned their associate's degree to earn a bachelor or master's degree; the plastics engineering department, where students experiment with plastics and the moulds to make them; and the Welding Department to see students on the cutting edge of metallurgy.
The committee finally ended their tour by going to Lycoming Engines.
Twenty-five percent of Lycoming Engines' employees are Penn College students. Company officials have told the college they would have moved if the workforce weren't so readily available, said Penn College administrators.
State Rep. Garth Everett, R-Pennsdale, serves on the board of trustees for the college.
"Representative Wheeland, myself and Sen. [Gene] Yaw, we strive to get other legislative colleagues up here to Penn College to see what we already know, about how great Penn College is," Everett said. "They were very impressed from what they were saying."
Penn College can act as a model for developing a workforce for their careers, Everett said.
Rep. Donna Oberlander, R-Clarion, said she was impressed by Penn College's graduation and placement rates, which are nearly both 100 percent.
"It's really about showing individuals that there are other opportunities and there are other ways to get into the workforce and that we have a huge need in our workforce," Oberlander said. "So some of it is a PR issue where you don't know that these things exist and unless you may be in that area or you grow up in a home where that's been a part of your conversation."
Wheeland, who graduated from Penn College, said he'd like to see the school and others like it get more state funding, considering the placement rate and related boost the Pennsylvania economy receives.
Penn College has a specific, applied technologies mission statement, said Paul Starkey, vice president for academic affairs and provost.
"Sometimes we'll say, 'we're best kept secret in the Commonwealth,' " he said. "Well, we don't want to be. We'd like to get our secret out."
Travis Shultz, a junior manufacturing engineering technology major, said he was glad to see state representatives take interest in Penn College.
"I would definitely say Penn College prepares you for industry because you're in class for four hours a day, five days a week," he said. "You're learning useful skills every day of the week."
In the weeks prior the representatives first stopped at an apprentice trade program for the operating engineers, the carpenters union and then the steamfitters. The next week, they visited Wistar, a Research institute in Philadelphia, and witnessed the partnership they have with the Community College of Philadelphia.
State representatives who visited were: Oberlander; Rep. Marcia M. Hahn, R-Wind Gap; Rep. Tina Pickett, R-Towanda; Rep. Russell H. Diamond, R-Lebanon; and Rep. Tommy Sankey, R-Clearfield, along with Wheeland, and Everett.