 Good morning. I'm Mitch Saephal, Program Manager for the Industrial Systems, part of the Mission Critical Operations Project. Thank you all for joining us this very exciting day for Cleveland Community College and our community. Please help me welcome Dr. Jill Biden, Secretary Thomas Perez from the Department of Labor, and Cleveland Community College's own Executive Vice President of Instruction and Student Development, Dr. Shannon Kennedy. Thank you. On behalf of the Board of Trustees, College President Dr. Steve Thornberg, and the faculty, staff, and students, I want to welcome you to the campus of Cleveland Community College. Two months ago today, this very day, we were notified that we were the recipient of a $23 million trade adjustment assistance community college and career training grant. The grant will help fund the development of a Mission Critical Operations curriculum with the primary purpose of training individuals for high-tech, high-paying jobs. We could not have created this project without the help of our partner institutions and industries. I do want to mention those. We have representatives here today, Nash Community College, Wake Technical Community College, Moultrie Technical College in Georgia, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and the Industrial Extension Office of North Carolina State University, and the International Society of Automation. Could you give those folks a hand for me? This $23 million grant is according to our system office the largest federal grant ever received by a North Carolina Community College. And so today we can sort of officially kick it off and we have the opportunity to really celebrate this achievement. I'm honored to introduce to you Dr. Jill Biden. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you Dr. Kennedy for hosting us today, and it's wonderful to be here at Cleveland Community College with all of you. We just had a great tour into some of the classrooms and so for all the students who are here this morning, good morning. I hope you're getting extra credit for being here early on a Monday morning. But I just wanted to take just one moment if I could just to remember our fellow Americans who are in the Midwest and are victims of the tornado. We know we've lost several lives so if we could just take a moment to remember them. Thank you. And I'm thrilled to be here today with Secretary Perez who in just a few short months as Secretary has been all over the country working to help make the difference in the lives of many American families. And as you may know I am a Community College teacher along with Dr. Kennedy we both share that we teach English as well and we actually teach the same course. And so we were talking about how difficult it is to find time to grade papers. So I teach full time at a Community College in Northern Virginia just outside of Washington. And I've been a teacher actually for over three decades. I'll be in the Community College tomorrow morning by 7.30 meeting my own students. The type of workforce partnership we're learning about today is really close to my heart. And this visit is one part of a day where we're visiting exceptional partnerships that are a result of the third round of these grants. And from here we go on to Broward County Broward College in in Florida and we're going to talk about the grants that they received. And a little over a year ago I headed out on a Community College to career tour where we went all over five states actually 900 miles. And where these grants were awarded and we looked at the programs where we had the business partnerships and we had the Community Colleges and we saw how they were partnering. And what we saw was really exciting and inspiring just like the programs we saw here today. And you know I am a big, big supporter of Community College because really I've seen what Community Colleges do to change lives. I've seen veterans return to the classroom and complete their higher education and then transition into careers and we'll hear somebody like that today. I've seen moms and dads who are raising families, they're struggling, they're juggling a lot and I've seen them reach new levels in their careers. And I've seen recent high school graduates and I just saw these now in your own labs who are on the step to a four year degree which is so great that some of your programs then are going to go on you can transfer to four year colleges. So I really have seen the extraordinary power of Community Colleges to change lives for the better. And I can say that I feel so proud to be part of an administration that has made Community Colleges central to its mission of having the best educated, most competitive workforce in the world. And these partnerships train workers with skills they need for jobs to match, you know, to match the employers just like we're doing right here. And you know these partnerships I'm sure for many of you are going to change your lives and you know you're going to have a job, you're going to get a career and you're going to get a good paying job. So they, you know, I think that what they do is they give workers just renewed confidence and hope and that's what we're all about. So we saw it on a tour here today with Ken Dover. I know we'll hear from him on a panel in a minute but his story is the perfect example of really what this tour is all about, what these partnerships are all about. And Ken is a veteran and he's transitioning to civilian life and even though he's still in the program he already has a job lined up with a local business. So you know what could be more perfect than that, right? So you can see the tremendous power these partnerships can have. So I want to say, you know, thank you really for everything you are doing. I want to say good luck to all the students here who are going on to reach your degrees. I want you to stay in school. I want you to graduate. And for many of you I know that your goal is then to go on to a four year degree. So it's all about a job, right? It's all about the job. So with that I'd like to introduce my traveling partner here, Secretary Perez. Thank you.