(MARSHALL) – Texas State Technical College in Marshall recently received a $192,179 Skills Development Fund grant from the Texas Workforce Commission.

The grant will pay for training more than 260 employees at The Crosby Group in Longview.

Twenty-nine tool and die employees will upgrade their skills at TSTC taking Advanced Gas Tungsten Welding, Basic Machining, Blueprint Reading and Sketching, Computer Numerical Controlled Machining and Math and Measurement for Machining.

More than 230 workers will take the 12-hour safety course Manufacturing Process and Safety taught by company staff at the Fisher Road facility in Longview.

The company specializing in material handling applications, lifting and rigging products announced in April a $45 million expansion and relocation to Longview Business Park. The company is based in Tulsa, Okla. and also has locations in Canada, Europe and China.

“I think the stance is TSTC is training a reliable workforce,” said Mike Heidger, human resources manager at the Longview facility. “It’s tough to find good talent today. TSTC is a big benefit for the region especially with employers needing desperately today a trained workforce.”

Bryan Maertins, director of workforce training and continuing education at TSTC in Marshall, could not be happier about the grant’s awarding.

“One of the things we are receiving is equipment,” Maertins said. More than $14,000 of the grant will be used for new welding machines and machining equipment to support the Crosby workers and for future Marshall welding and machining students to use for hands-on training.

The grant funding period is from Aug. 31, 2015 to Aug. 31, 2016. Since the mid-1990s, the Skills Development Fund has helped more than 4,000 Texas employers and more than 215,000 workers learn new work skills, according to the state workforce commission. The grant program has also helped create more than 101,000 new jobs.

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