Franken, Klobuchar, Peterson Announce National Science Foundation Grant Awarded to Northland Community and Technical College to Advance Education and Training

Press Release

Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar, along with Representative Collin Peterson, announced that the National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a grant to Northland Community and Technical College (NCTC) to advance geospatial information technology (GIT) and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) education and training. The NSF award of $599,997 will form new educational pathways and partnerships, leading to a highly skilled GIT and UAS workforce.

"Northland Community and Technical College is a national leader in education. Through innovative, state-of-the art training, it's preparing students for the jobs of tomorrow," Klobuchar said. "This investment represents a great opportunity for Minnesota to continue to thrive and lead the way in this emerging industry."

"We need to be doing everything we can to keep our Minnesota students and economy competitive in the 21st century," Franken said. "This grant to Northland Community and Technical College will get students interested in future career options and create more skilled workers."

"Minnesota's community and technical colleges do a tremendous job of working to meet regional workforce needs, as well as provide affordable and accessible educational opportunities in a variety of career fields," Peterson said. "With these grants, our community and technical colleges will be able to provide Minnesota students with the necessary expertise and advanced training needed to succeed in today's job market."

NCTC has launched both the first two-year Associate of Arts degree program in Geospatial Intelligence Analysis and the only accredited UAS maintenance program in the nation. In addition, NCTC recently created a small UAS Field Service Technician Program to prepare Minnesota's workforce for the integration of small UAS into the national airspace system.

Klobuchar is a member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which has jurisdiction over the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) including UAS regulations. The committee played a leading role in the passage of the FAA Extension, Safety, and Security Act of 2016 last year. This law created new opportunities for testing and promoting innovative uses of UAS while also addressing safety issues. In March, Klobuchar highlighted Northwest Minnesota's leadership in UAS education and training during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing.

Klobuchar has long supported efforts to help workers succeed in an increasingly specialized workforce while making the country's economy more competitive. In April, she and Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) introduced the bipartisan American Apprenticeship Act, which would provide funding to states to support pre-apprenticeship and Registered Apprenticeship programs. In June, she cosponsored the bipartisan Apprenticeships and Jobs Training Act of 2017, which creates a concrete, powerful incentive for businesses to embrace apprenticeship programs, accelerating the adoption of the apprenticeship model and boosting training and education available to workers. She also cosponsored the bipartisan Leveraging and Energizing America's Apprenticeship Programs (LEAP) Act earlier this year, which would provide tax credits for apprentices who are registered with the U.S. Department of Labor or a state apprenticeship agency. In 2015, Klobuchar successfully pushed for a $5 million grant from the Department of Labor to strengthen partnerships between community colleges and local businesses and expand apprenticeship programs. Also in 2015, provisions from Klobuchar's bipartisan legislation with Senator John Hoeven (R-ND), the Innovate America Act, which improves students' access to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education by allowing school districts to award funding to create a STEM-focused specialty school or enhance an existing STEM program within a school, were signed into law in 2015 as part of the Every Student Succeeds Act. This law helps give our students the skills they need to be successful in high-tech, high-wage jobs. Klobuchar also helped pass the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act in June 2014, which included her bipartisan provision to help match the skills of workers with the needs of local employers. The provision established competitive grants for partnerships that help provide workers with the skills needed to fill vacancies in up-and-coming industries.

For many years, Franken, a member of the Senate Education Committee, has been a leading champion of efforts to close the "skills gap," which has left many employers in Minnesota and across the country with millions of jobs they can't fill because they can't find enough trained workers. In the past several Congresses, Franken has pushed his Community College to Career Fund Act to incentivize businesses to partner with the state's community and technical colleges on training and support efforts. And earlier this year, he introduced his new Advancing Career Pathways Innovation Act to encourage local K-12 school districts in Minnesota and across the country to also explore partnerships with businesses to expose elementary, middle, and high school students to a variety of career pathways.

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