Oakland Community College’s renovated Auburn Hills-based Advanced Technology Center, which features new equipment and facility upgrades, has opened to area businesses, students, and the community.
Renovations to the center, which took place from May to August, include the construction of a new Machine Shop Lab and a Mechatronics Lab. Joining the space’s pre-existing Robotics Lab, all three of the center’s labs offer hands-on learning environments.
The new center will also operate as the southeast Michigan showroom for Hurco, an Indianapolis-based company that develops and manufactures machining centers, which has supplied eight CNC machines to the facility for student use. As part of the agreement, the company will update its equipment in the center every couple of years.
“This tremendous partnership with Hurco has reinvented the idea of bringing industry and education together,” says Deborah Bayer, interim dean of engineering, manufacturing, and industrial technologies at Oakland Community College. “By combining them in this state-of-the-art showroom our students are not only learning, but they are being exposed to great companies that are coming to see them operating the machines.”
She says updates to the college’s transportation and welding equipment and curriculum will be announced soon.
With five campuses throughout Oakland County, Oakland Community College offers degrees and certificates in 100 career fields as well as university transfer degrees in business, science, and liberal arts. More than 45,000 students annually attend the college, and more than a million students have enrolled since it opened in 1965.
