LEARNING

on these jobs.

“The key thing that took place is when Dr. Kim said, ‘We need to hire students for us to be successful,’” Holston said. “So as a technical college, our whole point of existence is helping the workforce be successful, prioritizing workforce development and making sure we get people jobs. So when Dr. Kim said we have jobs for people who qualify, I took it upon myself to make sure that we respond appropriately to fill those jobs with people who have those skills.”

The Absolics facility will be built in two phases with the first phase that broke ground in November being set to open by the end of the 2023 calendar year. To run the facility, Absolics plans to hire approximately 140 employees by 2025 for positions that include office staff, research and development engineers as well as operators and technicians in production, quality and maintenance departments.

Absolics, a subsidiary of materials company SKC Co. Ltd. which has been in Newton County since 1996, is bringing what has been called a game-changing investment into the Covington community — the kind of investment that could even impact K-12 learning in the Newton County Schools System in ways that intentionally educate students about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) careers.

“The opportunity Georgia Piedmont Technical College and Absolics bring to our community and the entire state of Georgia is revolutionary,” said Serra Hall of the Newton Development Authority. “This particular partnership is special because it’s going to propel our young students and adults into innovative success.”

More good news came for Georgia Piedmont during the first week of April. That’s when the school announced ground floor plans being made to erect a 50,000 square foot building designed to give students even greater hands-on experience to prepare them for “high tech, high-demand and high-paying industries like advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, bioscience technology, computer engineering, cyber security…and more,” according to Holston.

Both Kim and Holston underscored the urgency for the area to produce the kind of workforce that can undergird the industry increase that’s coming to Newton County.

“We cannot do this by ourselves,” Kim said. “Which is why we need to hire people. We need to train them based on our taste, which is the semiconductor industry. And in this area, we already know this environment here is a great place with great potential for this industry to continue to grow.”

Said Holston: “It’s going to take people of all skills. Absolics will be hiring people as early as the end of this year. So what that means for our college is we’ll need short-term certification programs as long as degree programs, because they’re not going to want to wait for a student to just finish a twoyear degree. (Kim) needs them to work for him soon.”

But, as aforementioned, there is an opportunity through this partnership for Georgia Piedmont to strengthen its educational pipeline with local students as young as early elementary school grade levels.

“When you talk about even educating small children in this field, it’s a lot about experience,” Holston said. “You’re not going to be teaching them programming, per se, but we’re going to give them some basic mechanical skills, some five-fingered dexterity skills. We might even start using some of the language they might hear in manufacturing facilities at a young age, so as they grow through our school system and into college levels, we won’t have to reteach them. It’ll just feel like they’re made to work these kinds of careers.”