SC tech college expands mechanic program to help worker shortages, meet student demand
Horry Georgetown Technical College is greatly expanding a program that certifies workers for one of the region’s most sought-after fields.
In August, the school will be doubling the size of its Diesel Engine Training program, a single-year certification that teaches students how to do maintenance on almost any diesel engine, including trucks, buses and construction equipment.
In Horry County and across the country, there is a major shortage of technicians can do this work and they are in such high demand that the Horry Georgetown’s program has a 95% job placement rate immediately after completion and students regularly go on to make $75,000 in their first job.
“Those students are able to move into careers with well-paying jobs. It’s been a win-win for everybody,” said Jeff Ball, Horry Georgetown’s Advanced Manufacturing Department chair.
The expansion is happening thanks to a new $2 million training facility the school leased in Conway across the street from its main campus. The facility, a warehouse behind Lowe’s Home Improvement store on Highway 501, is currently undergoing a $400,000 renovation that will be finished in time for the technical college’s new class of students in the fall.
The new facility, at 13,700 square feet, is nearly triple the size of the school’s existing one. The college said it is planning to purchase the facility outright but went ahead and leased it to make sure it would be open in time for the new school year. There is no timeline for that purchase right now.
Once the program moves into its new building, Horry Georgetown will also be able to “better support the training, vehicle maintenance and equipment storage needs of its Electrical Lineman and Golf Course Management programs,” the school said in a statement.
Despite the cost of the program’s expansion, which also includes hiring a second instructor, tuition will not be affected. In fact, almost all programs at Horry Georgetown, including the diesel engine technician certification, are completely free through 2023 thanks to COVID-19 stimulus funding. Gov. Henry McMaster is also pushing for the state legislature to make technical college tuition free permanently.
The Myrtle Beach area, in particular, desperately needs diesel engine technicians, Ball said. These workers help fix anything from Coast RTA and Coastal Carolina University buses to diesel trucks sold by local car dealerships to waste management equipment like trash trucks. Students can also work in the aviation, construction and power industries.
“If we don’t have technicians out there to meet the demands, then we can’t keep the system running and it hurts the whole infrastructure of the area,” Ball said.
The local economy’s focus on tourism, Ball said, makes it hard for businesses to find workers who have the proper training for many jobs outside of hospitality.
“We needed a yearlong job for our students, not just tourism and hospitality type jobs,” he said. The jobs also tend to be fairly recession-proof, as well, because the work these technicians do is still essential even if less money is flowing through the economy, especially those that work for power plants.
The current shortage of workers right now is a painful one, diesel engine instructor Kerry Stefanyak said.
“It means people are working twice as hard and putting in long hours,” he said. Diesel engine technicians “get burned out too” and “vehicles now require more maintenance and than they did before.”
The diesel engine technician program at Horry Georgetown is only in its fifth year but is already one of the school’s most popular certifications.
“To see it grow to this capacity in a short period of time is awesome,” Ball said. “This is something we’re very proud of.”
Strains on the program are easily visible. There’s little space left in the current garage students learn in, and the parking lot near the existing facility was filled to the brim during a recent visit. “I don’t even have enough parking for all my students,” Stefanyak noted.
Within a few years of getting started, the diesel engine program had to wait list of students, forcing some to wait a year or more to get in, Stefanyak said.
The popularity grew to a point Stefanyak frequently told prospective students to get on the wait list for the program, even if they were only a junior in high school or weren’t sure about the program, because it might be months or a year before they got accepted.
Stefanyak said he already has a wait list of at least 10 students for this fall from last year and open enrollment for the next cohort hasn’t even started yet.
“I hate turning them away,” he said, because it feels like he’s denying people a chance at a career.
Now, Stefanyak won’t have to turn away any of them.
This story was originally published March 31, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
