Penn Community Bank, Bucks County Community College Partner to Support Local Workforce Development

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people in the Center for Advanced Technologies
Image via Penn Community Bank.
Jeane M. Vidoni, President & CEO, Penn Community Bank; Dr. Felicia L. Ganther, President, BCCC; Christina Kahmar-McGinley, CFRE, Executive Director, BCCC Foundation; Bernard Tynes, Chief Marketing & Impact Officer, Penn Community Bank; Susan Herring, Executive Director, Workforce Development, BCCC.

Penn Community Bank is investing in local workforce development with $140,000 donation to support Bucks County Community College’s (BCCC) new, state-of-the-art Center for Advanced Technologies building and programs. The center is located at BCCC’s Gene & Marlene Epstein Campus at Lower Bucks in Bristol, Pa.

The bank’s contribution will support scholarships and workforce development programs and will play a direct role in the future successes of Bucks County students.

Educational Opportunities

The 28,000-sq.-ft. building offers manufacturing and industrial skills courses, with a focus on professional development for incumbent workers and workforce training programs for job seekers.

The center houses BCCC’s highly successful manufacturing preapprenticeship programs, in addition to a new welding program, CDL training, industrial safety, and soon to come, building and construction trades preapprenticeship and HVAC programs.

In addition, the center offers online workforce training in Microsoft Office technology, bookkeeping with Quickbooks, and English as a second language (ESL) instruction. New programs are planned in robotics, public safety drone training, and 3D printing.

An Honor to Be a Bank Benefactor

“Penn Community Bank is and continues to be one of the leading institutions in corporate giving and social responsibility in Pennsylvania. It is truly an honor for Bucks County Community College to be one of Penn’s benefactors as well as one of their trusted community partners,” said Bucks County Community College President, Dr. Felicia L. Ganther.

“Today’s gift towards the college’s New Center for Advanced Technologies is a testament to Penn Community Bank’s commitment to ensuring that our future learners have educational opportunities that will prepare them for the jobs of tomorrow.

“We are extremely grateful for Penn Community Bank’s investment in post-secondary education opportunities for the residents of Bucks County,” she concluded.

The Ideal Partner

Jeane M. Vidoni, president and CEO of Penn Community Bank, said, “An educated and highly skilled workforce is essential to a flourishing local economy. Community colleges are in a unique position to help workers make themselves more attractive to prospective employers, and in turn, strengthen businesses.

“Naturally, Penn Community Bank saw Bucks as an ideal partner.

“As a part of the community, we saw it as our job as a corporate citizen to support and expand the reach of this program to help local companies grow and individuals and families thrive in a difficult economic period,” she commented.

More Than Just a Building

Construction of the Center for Advanced Technologies is nearing completion.

It is more than a building: It’s a new approach to the college’s Workforce Development program.

This new structure will move the program to where it truly belongs, one of the college’s campuses Since the program’s inception, advanced manufacturing training and workforce programs have been held in a rented warehouse space.

Over the past few years, the Center for Workforce Development at BCCC has trained and graduated nearly 400 advanced manufacturing students in its two preapprenticeship programs and boasts a 92 percent job placement rate.

Manufacturing is one of the top three industries in Bucks County, with local manufacturers employing nearly 30,000 people, 14 percent of the total workforce.

As existing workers retire, the projected skills gap equates to more than 3,000 unfilled manufacturing jobs in Bucks County by 2025, and two million nationwide.

To help close this gap, BCCC partners with businesses to provide customized training for current employees, and develops industrial training programs that feed the workforce pipeline.

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