 The Mission Critical Operations Grant was a 2013 United States Department of Labor taxed a grant. It's $23.2 million awarded to our consortium. Our consortium consists of five schools, four of those are in North Carolina. Cleveland Community College, Wake Tech, Nash Community College, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and then there's a school in Georgia called Southern Regional Technical College. Cleveland Community College is the leader of the consortium. It has been from the award of the grant and have been spearheading largely the development of all the pieces that the grant has put in place. We provide project and fiscal oversight over all schools and also we lead the National Consortium for Mission Critical Operations with the ultimate goal of sustaining that project post grant funds. The Department of Labor awarded that amount of money to the schools here in North Carolina initially to build this training pipeline, focusing specifically on the overall Mission Critical Operator. That's the individual that we need times hundreds, times thousands. They made a good choice when they did select Cleveland Community College. The instructors here are good, the classes are good, the school overall is good in itself, and I enjoy it thoroughly. Cleveland Community College is located in Shelby, North Carolina, which is centrally located between Asheville, Rainbow Spartanburg in South Carolina, and Charlotte. We have an abundance of land. The power infrastructure is very good here, so we're very appealing to data centers. Within a 20 to 50 mile radius, there's several billion dollars worth of enterprise data centers. We've got T5 in Kings Mountain, Disney, Duke Power, AT&T, Wipro, Bowen. We have Facebook. We also have Google, which is probably about an hour away. So we're a hotbed for those Mission Critical facilities right here in the county. The movement to create a Mission Critical Operations program actually came out of industry with a partnership with the 7x24 Exchange Carolinas chapter. 7x24 Exchange is a group of end users in Mission Critical Operations. These are the folks that are actually doing the job every day. They were noticing that there was a lot of gray hair in the industry and that those people were retiring and they were not able to replace them with qualified candidates. So there was definitely a need to have qualified workforce and we developed programs so that we can have a qualified workforce. We've been looking for this training pipeline to come from the education system. So Cleveland recognized and heard our call that we need to train some some new generation of operators. We also provide employees that will attract other manufacturing companies into our area. So it's a cycle that we want to just continue to grow. My vision for every program here within Cleveland Community College is that every student is employed in the area that they study. We were able to do something really unique because we had the funds to do it and that was to hire subject matter experts from the field to really come in and vet this and to make sure that we were meeting the competencies that are needed in the workforce. Everybody involved in the MCO program at Cleveland has been very receptive to the feedback and the comments that we in the industry have given them to make sure that we are creating the right degree, the right certifications, the right content. They have written course content, they have written questions for industry recognized exams, they have worked with us to conduct like a LinkedIn workshop day for students. The majority of our programs are career ready programs, job ready programs to prepare people to go to work. So we offer certificates that can be completed in a semester or two. We offer a diploma in mission critical operations that can be completed in one year and we offer an associates degree that takes a full two years to complete that program. In our mission critical operations program we have two tracks. One is an IT track and one is OT which is operations technology. So those who really are interested in IT and maybe working in a true data center they have that track and then OT is what we're finding more demand for because that's learning the automation and a little HVAC and those other areas to keep everything up and operating not just computers. As part of the mission critical operations program we also developed two new industry recognized certifications called certified mission critical operator CMCO and certified mission critical professional CMCP. Industry recognized certifications are a way to show employers that you have the skills necessary to do the job. The mission critical program here at CCC encompasses hydraulics, pneumatics, robotics, computer engineering. It just gives you a really good wide base of knowledge. Along with the book work we want to provide as much hands-on training as we can so that the students will know what to do when they get into a manufacturing plant and they've had experience doing some of the tasks that they're gonna have to complete. And we would like for the students to be able to go and work for a data center for a semester to gain some experience and then possibly land a job. You need to have a little bit experience under your belt as you're going forward to make the better decision in the end. Cleveland Community College used our funds for personnel to develop content for supplies instructional supplies for in the classroom for students to use for instructors to use instructional technology. We purchased new equipment. We did over a one million dollar renovation to a data center classroom. The technology that they employ in the labs here are pretty state-of-the-art with phantic robots that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. The goal of the community colleges is to provide education to the masses and support the local community that we live in. I would say if somebody was considering entering into the MCO field that this would be a very good start and give you a very good base and knowledge to be employable. We're very in tune with what the local manufacturing needs are in this area and they're constantly involved in improving the programs and turning out the types of education that they want in employees when they're looking for people to hire. The growth is huge in this area and if someone could get in as a technician there's no level that they couldn't work up to. We need more people. We need more experience. We need more technical skills. We need more people that care about the country and care about the infrastructure. Be able to keep the lights on, be able to keep the phones on, be able to keep your computers on and it just deals with the entire economy of our country. So it is a great time to get a two-year degree and get out in the workforce and make very good wage. If a student gets out of the MCO program what we've built into it they can get a job starting at forty fifty thousand dollars a year almost anywhere they want. We believe that this is a program that will be around for a long time. The people that commit to this path will set themselves apart and there will be plenty of jobs for as far as we can see into the future. It makes me very happy to see my students succeed and to be able to gain successful employment and none of that would have been possible without the DLL grant we received.