A new $38,000 grant from the Illinois Community College Board's Manufacturing Innovation program will now allow Parkland to offer its manufacturing/industrial degree programs through online courses that require students to be on campus only when they are working in the hands-on lab.

Parkland has trained hundreds of skilled technicians in the area for over 40 years, but because of shift conflicts, many production workers have not been able to take advantage of its traditional campus-based classes to retrain and upgrade their skills.  Under the new format, unemployed and underemployed adults can prepare for machinist, welding, tool and die maker, industrial maintenance, CNC operation, and computer-aided drafting (CAD) jobs on a flexible schedule, taking classes from home or through computers available at the campus.  Workers can start or complete the courses when they choose and would also be able to pick the hours they want to come to campus to complete the required lab work.

The reformatted programs will also be offered to area high school students as dual credit courses, starting in the fall, giving students course credit for both high school and college.  Students would take the online portion at their school or at home, while the lab portion would be scheduled on Parkland's campus at either the beginning or end of the school day.

Parkland's Career Programs and Engineering Science and Technologies departments requested the grant late last fall.  For more information on the grand and the online hybrid manufacturing programs, please contact Rich Lake, Career Programs, 217.351.2236, or the Engineering Science and Technologies Department at 217.373-3838.