Innovations Hub to Help Local Workforce

The new innovations hub at the Paducah Area Technical School, located at Paducah Tilghman High School, will break ground on the new state-of-the-art complex in October.

A key goal of the new hub will be to provide highly trained individuals, through networking relationships, to fill local employment opportunities.

Monica Bilak, with Paducah Public Schools, told West Kentucky Star that the hub will be open to ALL students in McCracken, Graves, and Livingston Counties, not just those at Paducah Tilghman. It also includes students at St. Mary and Community Christian Academy.

Examples of career training available will be: I-T/Cyber Security, Computer Assisted Design, Robotics, Engineering, Welding, Automobile Technology, and Healthcare. Bilak added that many of the Healthcare classes are now taught on site at Baptist Health, and there are 
internships at Paducah Barge, and also welding classes there.

She stressed that the relationship with employers, and networking, (social capital), will be a key in the new hub, that will keep these highly trained individuals here, taking jobs locally, instead of moving to larger cities.

In the past, these opportunities have been reserved mostly for high school students, but the new innovations hub plans to begin introducing younger students to these opportunities, in order that they can begin to plan their career paths, and help make their transition into the actual classes and training more smooth.