VIDEO: EMCC Communiversity Making Progress

MAYHEW, Miss. (WCBI) – You see it every time you make the Highway 82 drive from Starkville to Columbus and vice versa: the Communiversity building for East Mississippi Community College.

EMCC and others involved in the building felt those from the Golden Triangle who helped fund the project should have some concrete data on how the building is coming along.

“This was a meeting for the partners that helped fund the communiveristy and the industry captains and business captains, just to give an update of where we are on the construction of the project, the programming, and all that,” said LINK CEO, Joe Max Higgins.

The contractors didn’t sugarcoat anything.

They admitted the project was a little behind schedule, but if you remember how wet this past summer was, you can understand.

Construction may be four weeks behind schedule, but considering the progress made from the beginning of the project just over a year ago, most of those community partners aren’t worried. They are confident in the Communiversity’s future.

“This is an investment. It’s an investment in the people; it’s an investment in the future. It’s an investment in industry, current industry, and industry we don’t even know about,” said EMCC President, Dr. Thomas Huebner.

“They’ve got faith in EMCC,” said Higgins. “They know that EMCC is viewed as one of the best industrial training community colleges not in the state but in our region.”

The scale of the building more than triples the size the school’s Center for Manufacturing Technology Excellence to 143,000 sq. ft.

“It’s going to be much larger. It’s going to have 21 training bays; it’s going to have 16 classrooms, state of the art,” said Huebner.

The goal is to keep a job ready manufacturing workforce in East Mississippi.

“Having a a qualified workforce is our Achilles’ heel, like it is everybody else’s, and just like you invest in a road, water, or sewage it’s time to invest in a facility that will train the next generation of workers for this part of Mississippi,” said Higgins.

The completion date for the facility is predicted to be between October 2018 and January 2019.

Either way, it should be ready in time for the 2019 Spring Semester at EMCC.