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anniversary in May, launched a capital campaign to raise $2 million through private donations from individuals and companies. The college will use grants and loans to cover the rest of the project. "LTC is an extremely important resource for our area. We have a lot of small manufacturers who rely on the college to not only train students who will make up our workforce, but also help us with employee training," Miller says. "We need employees with the right set of skills to help our companies stay at the top and LTC helps us do that. The jobs these students will get are good-paying jobs, which is great for our overall community since they tend to eat out more and spend it at local businesses." Paul Bartelt, president and CEO of The Vollrath Co. in Sheboygan, which makes equipment for restaurants, says "The demand out there for employees trained in these areas is huge and to meet the demand, this was something we felt we needed to do." - Michael Lanser, LTC president Independent to better serve your needs. From engineering to manufacturing, Argus is Northeast Wisconsin's choice! Whether your needs are personal or business, short-term or long-range, Argus provides the manufacturing industry with qualified personnel while aiming to connect jobseekers with positions that match their skills and ambitions. Serving Northeast Wisconsin for over 35 years with offices in Appleton, Milwaukee and Madison. 2339 W. Wisconsin Ave. Appleton, WI 54914 920-731-7703 www.argus-tech.com 20 | / insight on manufacturing • July 2013 On the Web Lakeshore Technical College http://gotoltc.edu the expansion is good news not only for the college and local businesses, but for the community as a whole. "We have an aging workforce and we need to bring in some fresh employees to do these jobs in our hightech manufacturing environment," he says. "By training workers for these jobs, we're not only helping people get high-paying, good jobs, we're also creating a talented pool of workers that may help attract companies looking to expand or move to our area." The project includes renovating the trade and industry building on LTC's Cleveland campus and constructing an addition on its flexible training arena that will nearly double the building in size. Both buildings are used to train students in CNC machining, welding and industrial maintenance. As part of the project, the school will also purchase more advanced equipment for each of the three programs, which will allow it to create new degree options aimed at turning out graduates with higher skill levels. Lanser says the college did a feasibility study before launching the project and community response was strong. "We thought going about it this way is the most prudent," he says. Studies show that 87 percent of LTC grads stay in the local community, Lanser says. "Many companies are dealing with a skills gap: There are jobs available, but the applicant pool doesn't have the right skills. This project is a key part of the solution to correcting that gap," he says. Bartelt projects as manufacturing continues to grow, there will be more demand than ever for workers with CNC machining and welding skills. "We'll never get back to the manufacturing economy we had in the 1970s, but I do think we're going to w w w.in s i g h t o n m f g .c o m