At first, it was seen as a vehicle in which socially responsible companies could invest to benefit the community. But the boomerang effect brought advantages to the companies that partnered with Stark State College of Technology.
It started in 1993 when the college broke ground for a 60,000-square-foot Advanced Technology Center. When the ATC debuted in 1995, The National Council for Resource Development praised the endeavor as a model public/private partnership in higher education.
Diebold Inc. provided $3 million to help construct the ATC, almost matching $3.756 million granted by the Ohio legislature. The center was equipped through $2.2 million in donations from good corporate citizens including The Timken Co., Republic Engineered Steels, Allen-Bradley Co., The Hoover Co., Liquid Control Corp. and others.
Para Jones, Stark State’s vice president for advancement and student services, says that donors to the ATC viewed their philanthropy as an investment in the future.
“These companies have a vested interest in our community, and they’ve proven that through their very generous contributions,” she says. “Many of them made the contributions because they felt the ATC would be such an economic development benefit to the whole community.”
As a showcase for new technologies, equipment and processes, the ATC has broadened learning opportunities for students by offering training in automated manufacturing technologies, computer-aided design and manufacturing, process control systems, quality assurance, electronics and office information systems. As a result, the work force gained more technically proficient graduates.
For local businesses, the technology center has been an arrow in the quiver of competitiveness. In using the industrial training services and business support services, companies have boosted their productivity, fostered growth and became more competitive in the local, regional, national and global marketplace. That ripple effect has been a boon to local economic development.
As for the companies that helped breath life into the ATC dream, their investments in the future directly benefited their shareholders, customers and employees.
Quid pro quo
“When we set out to raise funds for the ATC, we offered different sponsorship opportunities — long-term benefits such as training and use of the building,” says Jones.
All donors who contributed $500 or more are entitled to use classrooms and meeting rooms on Stark State’s campus on a space-available basis, rent free. But for companies that went the extra mile, the college offered more to make it worthwhile.
“The college has been a valuable resource to Timken and they’ve bent over backwards to help us,” says Elaine Russell Reolfi, marketing and corporate communications manager at Timken.
Frank Tinus, Stark State’s dean of corporate and community services, says that since the ATC’s key donors are “aggressive manufacturing companies,” the college installed state-of-the-art equipment, and created curricula to teach their employees how to operate, maintain and troubleshoot that technology.
“Exclusively for Timken, we installed a three-dimensional design software package called Unigraphics, which Timken uses in its own research and manufacturing endeavors,” Tinus says. “Then, we went through the extensive training ourselves to learn the program, so we could provide the training for Timken’s people locally.”
“Stark State has done a very good job of working with us to tailor training to our needs,” says Reolfi.
Tinus says that because Timken no longer has to send employees out-of-state to be trained by the software developer, the company has saved “hundreds of thousands of dollars in training costs.”
“They’ve already recouped a good deal of their contribution in the savings they’ve gotten from this one program,” he says, confiding that Timken has been a long-standing supporter of the college and contributed $300,000 to the ATC.
Reolfi says that in running the numbers, it’s clear Timken is getting much greater value from the money it spends on training.
“It’s not only a matter of saving money, it’s a matter of getting more associates to the training, because it is local,” says Reolfi. “In the last year, we nearly doubled the value we got out of our training budget by being able to have so many people train locally.”
The ATC also received about $550,000 in hardware and software product from Allen-Bradley Co., a division of Rockwell International, and $200,000 from Rockwell Software Inc., its control systems division.
“What Allen-Bradley got from that was a local training and demonstration center that aids their sales efforts,” says Tinus, explaining that the company’s sales representatives can bring prospective clients to the ATC to demonstrate its own products in use there. “That really enhances their sales presentation.”
Allen-Bradley sales representative Mark Eitzman, who helped facilitate the company’s donation, says the company also benefits from the ATC’s meeting room and seminar facilities.
“We teach professional classes on our hardware and software and there are times when our facility becomes overloaded. So we’re able to use the Stark classrooms,” he says.
The contribution also has long-range benefits, says Eitzman.
“As the largest technical school in Ohio, Stark State graduates upwards of 60 automation technicians each year who become employed by local industry. When the time comes for these engineers to apply automation equipment, it’s to our benefit that they’re already very familiar with ours,” Eitzman says.
Stark State’s reputation is another reason Allen-Bradley chose to link itself with the college.
“We’re proud to be very much a part of forwarding the education of the local industry here,” Eitzman says.
Diebold dug deep into its pockets and came out with an even sweeter deal. Tinus says that in exchange for its $3 million commitment to the ATC, Diebold is leasing the entire upper floor, using the 30,000-square-foot space as its worldwide training center.
“We use it to train our service techs and customers on various systems we sell, and to train our internal people on management skills, and for other types of group training. That’s important to us from a competitive perspective, because it allows us to maximize all our training resources,” says Diebold spokesperson Mike Jacobsen.
Jones says that Stark State worked closely with Diebold on the ATC’s design.
“They made it easy for us, because it was a classroom type setting that was already wired so we could just bring in our laptops and plug in,” Jacobsen says. “We also use the ATC auditorium-size meeting room for annual shareholder meetings and larger training groups.”
Bernie Libertore, Diebold’s manager of technical systems and customer training, says that since Diebold had outgrown its existing training facilities, and the college needed a technology center, “it was a good match.”
“We get a lot of mileage as a company on the handshake from business to education,” says Libertore, who serves as president of Stark State’s advisory board. “The college is also a resource for Diebold locally when we look to hire people for our engineering group. So we’ve utilized their resources in many ways.”
“The fact that we’re partnered with Stark makes it all the better, because they’re a technology training institution, and we’re a technology company,” says Jacobsen. “And because the college is local, a lot of our associates attend classes there. There are a lot of synergies there and it’s an important resource for the community — and an important resource for us as a company.”
“On the other hand, they haven’t bought any of our ATMs yet, so we’re kind of mad at them,” Libertore laughs. How to reach: Stark State College of Technology Advanced Technology Center (330) 966-5465