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Industry, higher education leaders converge at UA - Pulaski Tech Workforce Summit March 12

University of Arkansas Pulaski Technical College hosted a Workforce Summit and open house on Wednesday, March 12, on the College’s Main Campus in North Little Rock at the Campus Center Grand Hall, 3000 West Scenic Drive.

The summit featured discussions on apprenticeships, internships, training programs, and funding opportunities, with perspectives from students and industry leaders and included over 165 attendees. The event was co-sponsored by American machine tool manufacturer Haas Automation, Inc., headquartered in Oxnard, California, one of the largest builders of CNC machines in the world. Speakers included representatives from the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences, Little Rock Chamber of Commerce, Dassault Falcon Jet, Arcturus Aerospace, MISO Energy, and other regional organizations, as well as college students, administration and faculty.

UA - Pulaski Tech’s Director of the Goldman Sachs Foundation 10,000 Small Businesses, Kimberly Blackmon announced the program would return to Arkansas in Fall 2025. Applications for the program will be accepted through July 1, 2025, and the cohort begins mid-September.

A tour of the college's newly refurbished advanced manufacturing and robotics laboratories followed the summit. In 2024, the college received a $1.7 million grant from the Arkansas Department of Commerce Office of Skills Development to enable the college to prepare students to enter the workforce with skills in utilizing emerging technologies in the field of advanced manufacturing. Additionally, UA - Pulaski Tech committed over $500,000 to improve the Innovation and Technology Center’s infrastructure needed to operate the new machinery.

"One of the big misconceptions is that robots are going to replace humans. Robots are never going to replace humans. Robots are going to make humans more productive,” said Michael Garner, president of Phillips Commercial/Haas Automation, and co-sponsor of the event. “We can take a robot and replace a simple task that needs to be done over and over while we take people and make them more valuable by upskilling them, having them do things that require analytical thinking, problem-solving, and creative thinking. But regardless of the industry, there’s not enough humans to be employed so we’ve got to find a way to use automation to make humans more productive, to replace the workers that simply don’t exist."

"The theme that emerged from our panelists is our interdependency and how nearly every profession and industry relies on manufacturing,” said UA-PTC Chancellor Summer DeProw. "This Workforce Summit was a vital community engagement initiative, bringing together public and private sector stakeholders to demonstrate how UA - Pulaski Tech is actively contributing to the economic development of Central Arkansas."

View photo highlights.

Pictured, from left: Julie Munsell, Executive director – Culture & Talent, MISO Energy; Eric Wall, Chief Information Security Officer, U of A System; Brian Gittens, Vice Chancellor for Academic Pathways and Workforce Partnership, UAMS; and Jarod Wickliffe, Director, Business Development, Retention & Expansion, Little Rock Chamber of Commerce