Joel Foster is a Multimedia Journalist at KGUN9.
A new workforce training program in Nogales is aiming to prepare local residents for hundreds of jobs expected to open in the coming years at the Hermosa mine.On August 21, Pima Community College’s Nogales campus, in coordination with the Santa Cruz County Provisional Community College District , officially launched its electrician certificate program at the Santa Cruz Center , thanks to a $440,000 grant from mine owner South32 .
The company is developing the Hermosa project near Patagonia and says it will need to fill about 800 jobs once operations begin.South32 has pledged to hire 80 percent of its full-time workforce from Santa Cruz County. The electrician program is the first step toward that goal, offering students the chance to gain skills without leaving the community.“People who live in Nogales have to go to Phoenix or Tucson to go to school, to get a good job,” said Edgar Soto, Desert Vista Campus vice president for Pima Community College. “Now this is going to allow people who want to stay with their family, be part of the community, to have a good job with a livable wage, to continue to live here in a life of meaning and purpose.”The inaugural class includes 16 students, all of whom received full scholarships provided by South32. The three-semester program takes about 18 months to complete and is designed to give graduates entry-level skills in electrical work, a trade in high demand in mining and additional industries.For students like Ernesto Silva, the program means a chance to build a career close to home after years of commuting to Tucson.“Commuting from here to Tucson, it wears on you, you know, especially after a year or two,” Silva said. A former University of Arizona student who first pursued engineering, Silva said he now hopes to become a master electrician. “That’s what I’m really looking for, somewhere I can advance and, in a decade or so, be something like a master electrician.”College leaders say the effort will do more than train future miners. Soto noted that an influx of jobs will ripple across the region.“People are starting to realize okay, we have 800–900 new jobs coming. How is that going to impact everything else? Schools, hospitals, real estate, all these things,” Soto said. “These opportunities are not just going to impact the here and now; they’re going to impact people for generations to come.”Skylie Estep, South32’s Human Resources Director, says the company added enrollment numbers to ensure students could take their skills to other industries in the community.“We wanted to make sure we put more students through the program than South32 will actually hire when it completes,” he said. “We know that electrician skills are needed more broadly in the community, so we wanted to expand access to those programs.”Estep says the electrician's program was also chosen first due to the longer lead time to get students trained. She says further courses will focus on operational jobs that require less lead time and more on-the-job training.Later in the year, Estep says SCCPCCD plans to add more technical programs in the coming years to support workforce needs tied to the mining industry.Information about the electrician certificate program is available at the Santa Cruz Center website.
HERMOSA MINE MINING JOBS NOGALES NOGALES ECONOMY PIMA COMMUNITY COLLEGE SANTA CRUZ CENTER SANTA CRUZ COUNTY ECONOMY SOUTH32 Santa Cruz County
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