Moultrie Tech awarded ‘green’ grant

TIFTON — Moultrie Technical College was recently awarded a $3,753,579 grant to help implement a new two-year plan for including “green” fields of study at the school. The plan would eventually create new jobs in the energy efficiency industries for Tifton.

The Green Tift project kicked off Thursday afternoon with a meeting of the sponsors. The group hopes to eventually provide courses, certificates and degree programs in fields dealing with biofuels, energy efficiency assessment and renewable electrical powers (solar, wind, biomass and geothermal) at Moultrie Technical College.

Julie Sharpe of Sharpe Solutions was the grant writer for the project, and said that MTC was one of only 34 schools in the nation, and the only school in Georgia, to be awarded the grant.

“It is going to be such an opportunity to position Tifton as the center of green energy, green jobs and green industry,” Sharpe said.

The project hopes to recruit a minimum of 360 students into the new “green” programs over the next 24 months, and place at least 200 of them into new jobs in the energy field.

Green Tift will be recruiting probationers, high school dropouts, residents with disadvantages and displaced workers to participate in the program. Funding has been planned for daycare, and a new 16-passenger shuttle bus, to traffic students to campus.

In the coming weeks, recruiters will begin developing the courses that will be provided and studying the needs of local businesses for energy efficiency in their workforce.

“This is a tremendous opportunity for this college and local citizens to think about energy and what we can do to be more effiecient,” Sharpe said. “It’s an example of stimulus funds putting local people into new jobs.”

MTC is partnering with organizations and institutions throughout the county including the University of Georgia, Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, the Day Reporting Center, South Georgia Workforce Investment Board, Tift One-Stop Center, Georgia Department of Labor, the Tifton-Tift County Chamber of Commerce, the Tifton-Tift County Development Authority, Center for Innovation in Agribusiness, Center for Innovation in Energy; Heartwood Homes; CIty of Tifton, Lewis Taylor Farms, Literacy Volunteers of Tifton-Tift County, the Tifton Housing Authority; Tifton Circuit Superior Court and the Tifton Circuit State Court.

“I think the community will be very supportive of this,” Shawn Utley, vice president of satellite operations at MTC, said. “We’re the only school in Georgia with this funding so we have the opportunity to be training the whole state.”

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