Representatives of the Gene Haas Foundation visited the campus of Northeast Wisconsin Technical College Thursday to celebrate its $500,000 gift naming the college’s advanced machining lab in honor of the California CNC entrepreneur.
Gene Haas is the founder of Haas Automation, which is the world’s third-largest machine tool builder, and the inventor of the machine tool industry’s first fully programmable collet indexer — the Haas HA5C.
NWTC President Kristen Raney said the gift is one of the largest in college history, and she presented foundation representatives with a commemorative key to the newly-named Gene Haas Center for Advanced Machining at the event. Additional speakers included NWTC Vice President of College Advancement Meridith Jaeger, NWTC alum and business owner Jamie Veeser, and Gene Haas Foundation Director of Education Grants Kathy Looman.
“This is the perfect example of higher education partnering with business,” Raney told attendees at today’s celebration, which was followed by tours of the space.
The Gene Haas Foundation was initially founded to support issues around child care and youth development, but it pivoted its focus to education about 13 years ago, Looman said. Today it focuses mainly on middle school through college education, including gifts to institutions like NWTC that teach machining — though under-12 outreach has also occurred in Haas Automation’s home base states of California, Nevada and North Carolina.
“Everything’s made on a CNC machine; so it’s about making that connection instead of kids thinking ‘bikes come from Wal-Mart’ or whatever it may be,” Looman said.
While its philanthropy starts with a focus on CNC labs, the foundation works to respond to “pain points,” Looman adds, and sometimes that includes inspiring the next-generation workforce.
Like the foundation itself, the gift to NWTC is flexible and responsive to needs. The only thing it can’t be used for is actual CNC machines, which NWTC dean of trades and engineering technology Amy Kox explained would be a conflict of interest. But the funds can be used for scholarships, marketing, talent attraction efforts, K-12 outreach and more.
Currently, the funds from the Gene Haas Foundation are being used to provide a toolbox to all NWTC students who remain enrolled in the CNC machining program for one year, Kox said. Personal tools can be a barrier to entry for aspiring machinists that the college is working to remove.
Veeser, who relies on hiring NWTC grads at his business, Machine Plus, LLC, says it’s important to retain prospective machining talent and remove barriers that might keep them out of the industry where talent is badly needed.
“Thanks to Gene Haas,” he said, “they’ll have more resources.”
NWTC offers 34 certificates, technical diplomas, associate degrees, and apprenticeships through its manufacturing programs.
