NIMS, Haas Foundation Announce Scholarship Program

The National Institute for Metalworking Skills (NIMS; Fairfax, VI), the precision manufacturing industry’s premier standards and certification body, and the Gene Haas Foundation (GHF), which provides scholarships to schools for students entering technical training programs, announced a new program to help schools prepare more students for success in precision manufacturing careers.

The GHF-NIMS Credentialing Scholarship Program will provide eligible secondary and post-secondary institutions with grants to build high-quality technical programs that provide students with industry-recognized credentials and foundational skills. The Scholarship Program is launching with a $100,000 contribution from the GHF.

“With this program, we hope to support more high schools and community colleges as they build high-quality programs that use NIMS standards and credentials in order to deliver the most relevant and innovative training,” said the Gene Haas Foundation Board. “This provides our country’s manufacturers an excellent workforce.”

“There are an estimated 99,500 projected job openings for machinists and 117,100 projected job openings for industrial maintenance technicians nationally through 2020,” said Jim Wall, the executive director of NIMS. “We are proud to be working with the Gene Haas Foundation to help schools prepare more young people with skills and credentials they need to succeed in these in-demand jobs.”

The Scholarship Program officially kicked-off at the 2014 Skills USA National Leadership and Skills Conference in Kansas City, in which over 6,000 career and technical education students compete hands-on in 99 different trade, technical and leadership fields.

All competitors in the Precision Machining Technology, CNC Milling and CNC Turning programs will be the first to participate in the program, receiving scholarships to earn NIMS’ Level I Machining credentials.

www.nims-skills.org