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YOUNGSTOWN -- Youngstown State University, through its Center for Workforce Education and Innovation, plans to use part of $5 million from General Motors to invest in programs and services that zero in on inclusion and equality to best serve the unemployed and underemployed.
Some of the money also will be spent on the creation of the YSU Energy Storage Innovation and Training Center to support emerging technology industries in the Mahoning Valley by helping provide a capable workforce.
The innovation and training center for now remains in the concept and development stage, but YSU president Jim Tressel envisions a brick-and-mortar facility closer to Voltage Valley, the name given to Trumbull and Mahoning counties because of the investments in energy storage and electric vehicle industries.
Ground Zero for Voltage Valley is Lordstown, where General Motors is partner with South Korea’s LG Chem to build a $2.3 billion plant to mass produce electric vehicle battery cells and where Lordstown Motors Corp. is preparing to launch its electric truck, the Endurance, from where GM once made automobiles for 53 years.
Tressel said he sees the innovation and training center as part of the natural evolution of YSU’s Excellence Training Center -- high-tech space for machining, additive manufacturing, robotics, automation and more -- that’s under construction at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Commerce Street.
“So there will be an evolution,” Tressel said on the possibility of a physical energy storage innovation and training center. “What we can do here are a variety of things. The things that we need trained that we can’t do here, our thought process is to have a physical center out closer to Voltage Valley there and put some of things (there) that aren’t part of this curriculum … .”
Read more on this story in Wednesday’s print edition of the Tribune Chronicle or online at www.tribtoday.com.