Kankakee Area Career Center Logo

KACC Receives American Welding Society Foundation Award $25,000 Grant

Launch the media gallery 1 player

Kankakee Area Career Center is delighted to announce KACC has been awarded a $25,000 Welding Workforce grant through the American Welding Society’s 2020 Welding Workforce Grant.  KACC has a long history of working with AWS and incorporates AWS S.E.N.S.E. Training into its curriculum. 

Knowing how the AWS Foundation is dedicated to building the welding workforce by providing grant funding to secondary and post-secondary welder training facilities, Michael Gall, Welding Instructor, and his Teacher Assistant, Terry Erickson have applied for this grant diligently the past few years.  This year, KACC was blessed to have their proposal, detailing equipment, which, with our facility upgrades, will increase the number of students and enhance the level of training they receive.

Mr. Gall said he applied for the grant because of the growing number of students enrolling in welding courses each year. “The incredible amount of interest [in welding] is holding steady, creating more urgency in our need for newer, more reliable equipment,” He continued. “Suffice it to say, our welding program has grown exponentially more than our budget, pushing us to look outward for financial assistance.”

The AWS Foundation not only awarded grants to KACC, they also awarded grants to eight additional schools, each presented with an award of up to $25,000 to improve the quality and training capacity of their welding programs to support the needs of local industries. In addition to KACC, the grateful recipients include:  Aiken Technical College – Aiken, SC; Crowder College Advanced Training and Technology Center – Joplin, MO; Kansas City Kansas Community College – Kansas City, KS; Mifflin County Academy of Science and Technology – Lewistown, PA; Mount Pleasant High School – Columbia, TN; Texarkana College – Texarkana, TX; Waubonsee Community College – Sugar Grove, IL; and York County School of Technology – York, PA.

Launch the media gallery 2 player

Since 2017, more than $1,000,000 in Welding Workforce Grants have been awarded. For more information on the AWS Foundation grant program for welding schools, please contact John Douglass at jdouglass@aws.org, or phone (800) 443-9353, Ext. 212. Or visit www.aws.org/workforcegrant.
 

Launch the media gallery 3 player