MORRISON – The Morrison Institute of Technology is a step closer to receiving $1.5 million to build an Automation Annex to its Innovation Center.
The annex would house the new Automation Engineering Technology Program, which will train students to design, program, troubleshoot and maintain automation systems and equipment for small to mid-size manufacturers and other businesses throughout the region.
The money is included in a funding package expected to be signed by President Joe Biden in the coming days, U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-E. Moline, said in a news release Thursday.
A third of the money will be used to build an addition to the school’s Innovation Center to house the new program, which should begin to see its first students in August 2023, Christopher Scott, president of Morrison Tech, said Thursday.
The rest will be used to add equipment and other program needs, and also to enhance some of the existing Innovation Center equipment and programs, he said.
Plans have been on the books for some time, and the request for federal funding was announced last summer.
The money “will allow us to fast track the program development and do our part to support a post-pandemic manufacturing sector,” Scott said.
The curriculum is set; the design of the annex and decisions on the equipment needed are up next.
Over the years, many of the region’s large manufacturing plants have left, with smaller companies moving in. Automation and intelligent process control – using robots for all or part of their operations, or sometimes even for just a single task – have become technologies that these businesses need to survive in a global marketplace, he said.
The Automation Engineering Technology Program will train students to provide the services needed to help those businesses adapt, “to make companies more competitive and responsive to changes in the marketplace,” Scott said.
An advisory board made up of representatives from area businesses will help Morrison Tech keep up to date on regional automation needs.
It’s not just manufacturers that are coming to rely on such technology. Robotics can be used to fetch pallets of goods from warehouses, to pack products, or to keep fluids moving through a system by automatically opening and closing valves.
“All the big players already are using this technology,” Scott said – Wahl Clipper, Archer Daniels Midland Co. in Clinton, Iowa, the Walmart Distribution Center ... “It’s all around us, it’s just getting people educated in how to design and build and troubleshoot it.
“Eventually, every company is going to have this at some level or scope.”
It will become a new area of expertise for the private, nonprofit Morrison Tech, which offers 2-year associate’s degrees and which recently was ranked the number one school in the Midwest for its return on a student’s investment in a degree there, Scott said.
The funding package has passed the House, said Bustos, a member of the House Appropriations Committee. The measure passed the Senate on Thursday.
The story was edited to reflect passage of the bill by the U.S. Senate.