U.S. Secretary of Labor visits CTC

On Sunday, July 1, ҹɫ Chancellor, Dan White and UAF Community and Technical College Dean, Michele Stalder welcomed U.S. Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta and U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan to UAF CTC’s downtown center at 604 Barnette Street for a tour. They were also greeted by students and local job creators.

Along the tour, Secretary Acosta spoke one-on-one with students, job creators, and CTC faculty and staff. He specifically recognized the variety of over 40, career-focused programs at UAF CTC, which are essential to workforce development in Alaska.

The downtown tour included Allied Health Program facilities, including a state-of-the-art dental facility used to train dental assistants, lab rooms that replicate patient rooms used by medical assistant students, and a suite of facilities used by nursing students, featuring hospital beds and other training equipment.
Secretary Acosta also visited UAF CTC’s 3D printing lab that has 16 state grant-funded, 3D printing stations for drafting and design classes as well as extensive computer labs and equipment used by the Information Technology Specialist Program.

Before visiting the UAF downtown center, Secretary Acosta toured UAF CTC’s Process Technology facility located at the Fairbanks Pipeline Training Center where students are trained to work in industries such as mining, petroleum, water treatment, food processing and more. The facility features a control room, wellhead, and instrumentation equipment used to train students with hands-on education.

After visiting with many faculty, staff, and students, Secretary Acosta thanked everyone for coming on a busy holiday weekend and he recognized the extensive community partnerships maintained by UAF CTC in order to provide relevant education and job training programs, ensuring that students are highly employable while also meeting the needs of local employers.
“CTC enjoyed Secretary Acosta’s visit” said Dean Stalder, “and appreciated the opportunity to showcase our 40-plus programs, the strength of our community partnerships, and our students.”