98.7 Chatt TechIt's becoming more and more important as businesses automate and get more robotics. Very important in manufacturing.
For example, if I left my job today, let's say Thursday, I have no doubt I'd be working by Monday.
I have a really good connection with the instructors here now. They all connect with you. They all want you to have a good career for your future.
98.7 Chatt Tech where 98.7% of our students earn a career. Today we're going to learn more about the Industrial Maintenance program at Chattahoochee Tech, we'll speak with current and former students and faculty to learn more about this diverse field.
My name is Stephanie O'Donoghue. I'm the Associate Dean of Computers, Manufacturing and Engineering. I've been at Chatt Tech for nine years now. The Industrial Maintenance program is all about having the skill set to go into an industrial setting and be able to maintain the equipment and the automation at that place of business. It's very important to manufacturing and more important as businesses automate and get more robotics.
Robotics? Are we talking Skynet from Terminator here, Stephanie? Come with me, if you.
Want to live.
It's just the way for them to be able to manage all the equipment in a more efficient way as opposed to having to just individually maintain the equipment.
My name's Daniel Daivari and I was a student in chat tech until I graduated in spring.
So, Daniel, what brought you to the Industrial Maintenance program?
So at first I came to Chatt Tech for computer programming, and then I met Alan, and he talked to me about the Industrial Maintenance and the Electrical Technology program, and I got interested in it. Since I like physics, talking about PLC, motor controllers and pneumatics hydraulics and a lot of different courses that we have for the industrial maintenance, and that's how I gravitated towards this program.
My name is Ken Krausman, and I graduated Chattahoochee Tech in May of 2022. There's a lot of, you know, bookwork and practical work, but there's a lot of lab and hands on work which appeal to me. I have a short attention span anyway, so I have many things to choose from. It was the buffet of playground. I mean, look.
Everyone loves a good buffet. What makes Chatt Tech's program a better option?
My name is Alan Kazamian, and I'm one of the full time instructors here at Chattahoochee Technical College in the Industrial Maintenance program. Typically, we try to provide everything 50% lecture, 50% hands on. So you don't just come to class and listen to us talk for 90% of the time and then have like a 30 minute lab sometimes, actually opposite. All right.
Less talking. More doing. Thanks, Alan.
My name is Marcy Smith, and I'm the Dean of Business and Technical Studies at Chattahoochee Tech. One of the benefits of having your hands on while you're in one of our technical programs is that you not only know about a certain topic, but you know how to do it, and you really can't. There's no substitute for I know how to do that in an engine. I know how to do that in a, you know, situation on a construction site or in a manufacturing setting.
Well, that sounds great. But Daniel, give me a student's opinion here. What makes this program special?
I have a really good connection with the instructors here. Now, Alan is an understanding instructor. They all want you to have a good career for your future. They always support you.
Hey, Alan. What can students learn in Industrial Maintenance?
Mainly it's a mix of low voltage systems, so electrical systems, low voltage, meaning very safe. Kind of like all the way down to even smaller than batteries like double A battery size. So small voltage systems and circuits, circuitry all the way up to high voltage where you see maybe four times higher than the voltage that you have in your home. So getting into the kind of dangerous levels of electricity and we also work with pneumatics, which is working with air and we work with hydraulics, working with oil as well. It's really about maintaining the machinery that any of these companies in the field are using. Most of these companies are running 24/7. So we teach our students to be able to maintain and repair the machinery because you don't want it to break and then fix it. You want to maintain it while it's operating.
Hello, my name is Joe Tama. I'm in Industrial Maintenance. I grew up tinkerin g around with my toys. I, you know, always took them apart and everything. I kind of hated my job. And so I got back into school, Industrial Maintenance seemed to be something hands on. And it's good to be able to say, hey, this is what you're actually going to see in the field versus just learn this.
What kind of students do well in the Industrial Maintenance program.
To be honest, anybody willing to learn. I mean, I have students that have come in that as soon as they came in the very first semester. They were really worried that other students had more knowledge than them and had more electrical experience. But I've taken students that have literally zero clue about electricity and got them hired and opportunities to work full time or part time. Their H.R. Manager and their main managers come back and say, hey, we want more of him. As long as you have a willingness to learn and they show up, that's all I need.
Stephanie what other qualities would help a student interested in Industrial Maintenance?
Are you mechanically inclined? Do you like to solve problems and fix stuff? And do you want to make a really good living? By just investing two years into your education and into your training. And if you do, then you should really come and explore industrial maintenance as a career, because it's a very popular career right now. There are lots of opportunities.
In high school. If they were good in the kind of the technical area of math or the science area. And even for me, when I was in high school, I took some like engineering courses where you did some soldering of some circuits or built some small circuits. If you're kind of on that, that cusp of thinking about maybe I should do engineering at a university, or maybe I want to get some good hands on with like again, 50% lecture, 50% hands on skills. Then I recommend Chattahoochee Tech and our program.
All the students are welcome to come here and get a grasp of what we do in here and what we expect to happen in the field. And also one of the things that grabs a lot of students here is that maintenance is very hot right now and there's a lot of job opportunities you study for at most two years. The outcome, it's pretty much worth it because you're going to get good jobs and future.
I mean, I recommend for any student that may be on the cusp of thinking, Hey, should I do this program? Or maybe I don't have enough knowledge, or maybe it's too hard to let them. I tell every student this that you can even send me an email or come by my office. I show them around the lab, give them a tour of the low voltage. The high voltage, we have robotics that we program. And when you become kind of a senior level student, we have even robotics programming that you can cook for you. So we have a making coffee, we have them making pancakes, whatever you want them to do, you'll learn that knowledge and Wait, wait, wait.
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Alan, this is important. You can help me build a robot that'll make breakfast?
Because most of the field is then the robot palletizing. So I not only teach them the things that are needed in the field, but some extra fun stuff when you when you get towards the end. So KSU actually bought one of these same robots, and now it's the one making Jamba Juice. They do it on a touchpad and it'll make the entire smoothie. And it's the exact same robot that we use. Again, for any students that are kind of on the cusp of, Maybe I should do this, maybe I shouldn't, or I don't really know even what this is about. I recommend that they come to our program and I'll show them everything that we have to offer.
Daniel and Joe, From a student's point of view, what's there to like about Industrial Maintenance?
What I like about Chattahoochee is that I'm able to use my hands to create something so I can visually see it's doing work for me, like it's turning electricity to light or it's turning a three phase motor.
And definitely people that are very hands on. There's obviously theory involved, but we get a lot of students, from what I've seen lab tutoring that, for example, will come into the class and would never have touched the breadboard before versus if you come in that first day, you already know how to use the breadboard. You're already starting to build the lab instead of having a re learned the breadboard to begin with.
I mean, I don't know anything about breadboards, but I'd love to hear more about the job market. Stephanie.
Well, if you look at the job growth, this field is projected to grow in the next several years. In Georgia, especially a little bit north of where the campus is, the campuss is in Acworth, if you continue on up 75, we have quite a few manufacturing plants in Georgia, right? So a lot of the students from this program get hired in those different places. So some of the places that I know of that students have gotten hired like Shaw Industries, Glock, Southern Tea.
So for each of our programs at Chattahoochee Tech, we have an industry advisory committee. Those are people in each given industry that will employ our graduates when they get finished with our program. And so what we rely on those people for on the advisory committee is what are you looking for when you're hiring someone to do this job or this job or this job? And that includes not only hard technical skills like we nee, we need graduates who know how to do this, but also soft skills. What kinds of things are you looking for in terms of communication skills and professionalism and that sort of thing? So we rely on them for that sort of information. We also rely on them to help us stay up to date in what's happening in the industry. Many of our industries that we're training graduates to go work in are rapidly changing. Technology is changing in a really fast pace. So what we want to do is be sure that our students are prepared to go work in that rapidly changing industry. And we have those advisory committee members come in and talk to our students. We have them. We have advisory committee members who will do mock interviews with students to help prepare them for that process. So those people really, really support our programs and we feel like it kind of sets us apart. It helps us make sure that we're right where we need to be in terms of training the future workforce for those industries.
Thanks, Marcy. So, Alan, can you name any other companies that help place students?
We work at Medline, Bell Power, Clorox, Amazon. Wellstar, Coca-Cola. I mean, it can really be anywhere that's continuously creating a product or providing a service. It's really mainly running 24 seven. Let's take Glock for example, the gun manufacturer, because they have machinery that's running 24 seven to create the gun. So all the way from that to health care, where like hospitals, for example, they're running 24 seven and they have machinery that needs to be running 24 seven as well. And you definitely don't want those machines to go down. So it's really any location or any manufacturing location that is running. And they want to maintain that machinery so that it doesn't go down.
You can trip over career opportunities from guns to health care. I like it. Ken - the beer drinkers that are listening, they want to know more about your job.
I didn't know it on the other side, but I filled out an application two or three times, maybe four times, and got zero response with the exception of one response from Maryland. Basically, nothing happened. You know, he said that he he put my resume to the proper people at Anheuser-Busch. We had a career event at Chattahoochee Tech, and the general manager of the plant was there, along with a few other executives. This lady took the time to hear me out on the fly. She asked for my resume. I gave it to her. She stopped everything, took a moment to read it and said, All right, we'll reach out to you, and I didn't think much of it. They called me within a week and everything happened in one day, pretty much. I took the test, had five interviews in one day, and they offered me the position. I chose to be a weekender. My commitment to them is 48 hours a month. So there's opportunities to give yourself in two weekends you can finish your obligations to them. So I have two weekends off. The reason why I chose the weekender because on Saturdays you get paid time and a half and Sundays you get paid double time. So if you do the math, it's $50 ish on Saturday and $70 and change on Sunday. I didn't realize it at the time, but it's you know, it's been explained to me on more than one occasion. That's like the lottery of jobs. And I won it.
Cheers to that. All right. Important question here. What's the earning potential for graduates.
Really good paid! You are leaving this program making $60,000 from a two year program. Which is like fantastic. I've heard recently 30, $30 an hour. A lot of students are getting that rate. But it just depends on the needs of the company and the skill set of the student who is leaving. But it's a great thing. Honestly, I don't know how you can beat $60,000 with an associate's degree. There are a lot of people who come out of a four year college and don't get that.
You're right, Stephanie That's a great salary range. Alan, Do you have anything else you want to add?
So typically the average pay before you graduate or even like right on the cusp of graduating, it's continuously climbs. So there's so much demand from companies in the fields because if they have a machine that goes down there, they could be losing thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per hour just because that machine is down or that line is not running. So they pay. I mean, typically, I would say right now it's around $23 to $26. An hour full time is what I see for most of the companies that send me their part time or full time work for our graduates. So somewhere in that range around 23 to 26 and it's continuously going up. And we have companies right now coming in at the moment and they're paying 30 to 50 starting. And if you work on the weekends they're doing double time. So it's up to like 50 to $60. It's it's great for this this field and for the knowledge that you learn. You're not only learning, you're getting you're getting paid for the knowledge that you're actually learning and you get to apply that hands on in the field. So it's all it's all a win win, to be honest.
For me, if I left my job today, what's today, Thursday? I have no doubt I'll be working by Monday. I had a student in my class at the beginning of this semester on the second week was like, Hey, I got a job. And I think he said he was making 29 an hour with zero experience.
For more information about the industrial maintenance program at Chattahoochee Tech, visit Chattahoochee Tech.edu . Thanks for listening to 98.7 Chatt Tech where 98.7% of our students earn a career.
