RIT offers workforce development for veterans

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Elizabeth Lamark/RIT Production Services

Veterans at the upcoming electronics manufacturing and assembly program will get hands-on training in RIT’s CEMA Lab through a regional workforce development program.

Rochester Institute of Technology is presenting two training and certification programs for unemployed, or under-employed, area veterans who want to work at regional advanced manufacturing and electronics assembly companies. Training sessions are free and will take place at RIT’s Center for Electronics Manufacturing and Assembly, June 6- July 1 and July 11-Aug. 5.

An information session about the training programs is taking place at noon on Wednesday, May 11, at Rochester Works, located at 255 N. Goodman St. Participants can register online.

RIT is partnering with Rochester Works, the Veterans Outreach Center and Adecco Staffing Agency to recruit participants for the two four-week sessions.

The university received $99,955 from the New York State Department of Labor’s Consolidated Funding Application for Workforce Development. Allocations from this fund focus on providing occupational skills for the in-demand fields of next-generation manufacturing and technology, optics, photonics and imaging, and electronics assembly in New York state, and part of the long-term strategic planning set forth through the state’s Regional Economic Development Councils.

Faculty from RIT’s College of Applied Science and Technology will conduct the training sessions, along with instructors from EPTAC, a national electronics industry training organization, to attain Institute Printed Circuits certifications in the areas of electronic manufacturing processes and rework, modification and repair of assemblies.

“RIT has supported local electronics packaging industry for a long time, with workforce training, research, prototype builds and other laboratory services,” said Manian Ramkumar, director of CEMA and the training program’s coordinator. “Many local companies have benefited from this workforce training, and this new program allows us to extend what we can do to a population that really is in need of these skill sets to make them marketable in a high paying industry.

“And that particular industry has grown very well in the local region. We have local companies manufacturing products for the military and aerospace industry, and who best to serve that industry than our own veterans? They can be trained for this industry and benefit from it.”

Local companies Harris Corp., Black Box Biometrics and IEC were instrumental in helping define the training and are some of the regional organizations looking for the skill sets the training could provide for placements in entry-level, supervisory or managerial level positions, said Ramkumar, who also serves as department chair of the mechanical, manufacturing and electrical/mechanical engineering technology program in CAST.

More information about the program at RIT can be found online or by contacting Michael Radler of the Veterans Outreach Center by phone at 585-295-7830, or Lee Koslow of Rochester Works at 585-258-3516.