GE Aerospace Foundation to Give Nearly $500K to Sinclair for Workforce Training
Nearly $500,000 will be invested over the next year by GE Aerospace and the GE Aerospace Foundation at area training sites to support workforce efforts across southwest Ohio.
In this area, about $300,000 of the money will go to Sinclair Community College to train welders at its Dayton campus and technicians at the school’s Mason campus.
About $130,000 at the Hobart Welding Institute in Troy and another $30,000 will be directed to the Talent Collaborative of Greater Cincinnati, a partnership of workforce development organizations, GE Aerospace said.
“Workforce development is the engine that’s going to power long-term growth in the region,” Meghan Thurlow, president of the GE Aerospace Foundation, said in an interview.
GE’s Lifting Futures investment will support those three institutions in 2027 with the goals of adding training capacity and strengthening career awareness and recruitment.
“The Cincinnati-Dayton area is obviously a natural pick for one of our first sites,” Thurlow said. “With General Atomics (and) Joby (Aviation), it just seems like there’s a new jobs announcement in southwest Ohio every month.”
She said that in conversations with some 40 workforce professionals across the area this summer, a need for skilled welders emerged as one of the top concerns.
“It’s an area where we felt that we could help move the needle,” Thurlow said.
The donations are a first-year endeavor, she said. The foundation will assess whether the first donations met real needs and go from there.
“This funding is just a start. This is just for Year 1,” she said.
Another $400,000 will be available for manufacturing workforce development pilot programs and offices via GE Aerospace’s Future of Manufacturing Fund, administered by the United Way of Greater Cincinnati, Thurlow said.
One company objective at work here: Train 10,000 workers across multiple communities for the aerospace industry by 2030.
As GE sees the investment, it will benefit roughly 200 workers by:
- Increasing capacity at Sinclair to train more than 150 entry-level workers through accelerated manufacturing courses, welding skills training and training of technicians.
- Recruiting and placing 50 students into open seats at the Hobart Institute of Welding Technology’s welding program in Troy.
“At Sinclair, we see firsthand that employers need skilled workers and that students need accessible, hands-on pathways into these careers. Support from the GE Aerospace Foundation can help reduce barriers, strengthen training programs, and connect more people to meaningful career opportunities in our region,” Matt Hoyng, manufacturing solutions manager at Sinclair, said in a statement from GE.
In April, the GE Aerospace Foundation announced the first five communities selected as part of its inaugural $30 million workforce training push: the Dayton-Cincinnati region; Auburn, Alabama; Dallas; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and Wroc?aw, Poland.
Dubbed Lifting Futures, the effort is the GE Aerospace Foundation’s workforce training program, first announced by GE Chairman and Chief Executive H. Lawrence Culp last fall.
“With Lifting Futures, the GE Aerospace Foundation is taking the next step to ensure a strong future for the aerospace industry and for the thousands of workers we need to meet growing demand,” Christian Meisner, chief human resources officer at GE Aerospace, said this spring.
One other donation from GE: A subscription to Let’s Go Aerospace magazine to junior high schools in “all of our regions.”
2029-12-28 23:59:00.0