The buildings on Howard Road, right now, may just look like a work in progress to passersby. But those who got to take a tour and experience the site of the future Gainesville campus of Lanier Technical College Thursday night know it will soon be a "game changer" for technical colleges all over the state.
Lanier Technical College is building a brand new campus, almost double the size of their old campus in Oakwood, on the Gainesville property just past Interstate 985. At Thursday's "halftime report," as college President Ray Perrin called it, students, staff, community members and government higher ups got to tour the space.
Governor Nathan Deal spoke on the new campus, which had $140 million put in to it, and said it will double the capacity the school can both hold and provide.
"This will be the first technical college campus in the entire state of Georgia. It will be the model for technical college campuses in the future. And I'm glad we started right here in this community," said Deal, who is also a Hall County resident.
Deal said several years ago when he and his team toured around, looking to bring good workers to the state, the one question that always came up with a new prospect., “What is the quality of your workforce if we decided to build a facility in your state?” That's when Deal began to ask local companies if they needed workers with specific skills or had gaps, and the answer was always yes. "Instead of bringing qualified people out of state, why don't we educate Georgians to take jobs that are right here in our own state?" So he said they went to the General Assembly and asked for "more categories of types of jobs that were already available if you had the skills to be able to take them," and are now up to 12 categories that the HOPE Grant will cover 100 percent of the tuition of the courses for a certification or diploma.
The Governor joked that he and State First Lady Sandra Deal would be taking classes at Lanier Tech when his term was up.
Also speaking at the event was Technical College System of Georgia Commissioner Gretchen Corbin. She agreed with Governor Deal - this new campus is a game changer.
"I wanted him to be able to grow up and be like, 'My mom did it!' even though I'm 26 and it was a very long time between eighth grade and now, because I just got it in February. I wanted to make my son proud and I wanted to make my Grandpa proud and so I could say I did it."
Bailey is now in her first year of early childhood development coursework. "It makes me so excited and it makes me so proud, because they're putting so much effort into making us better people." Bailey encouraged anyone who was interested in going back to school to get their GED or any other degree to do it and give technical college a try.
