Great Lakes Boat Building School plans for expansion with state grant

CEDARVILLE — The Great Lakes Boat Building School in Cedarville is currently planning a massive expansion that will more than double its graduation rate.

In 2005, the Great Lakes Boat Building School was founded to educate and train people for marine-based jobs along the Great Lakes. Every year, the school graduates a maximum of 24 students with careers in boat building and marine service/technician programs.

Because the demand for these trained professionals is so high, the school said 100 percent of graduates have had successful job placement in their field. Many students are even recruited for these positions before they graduate.

“There’s just so much demand for students and students are finding that they can come here and leave with a great career working in marinas around the Great Lakes and beyond,” said Tom Coates, the school’s director of development. “Two of our graduates now work for a marina that told us they’d love to hire four more students. There’s such a demand for building boats right now and what our students are learning is exactly what the marketplace is looking for right now.”

Earlier this month, the Great Lakes Boat Building School received a grant of $2.7 million from the Economic Development Administration’s CARES act. With this grant, the school is planning on increasing the number of graduating students each year from 24 to 50, with the possibility of increasing in the future to up to 100 students a year. The school is expecting to maintain its 100 percent job placement rate even with the increase in students.

“This grant is going to expand our school, basically double our graduation capacity so that we can start graduating students between 50 to 100 of them,” said Coates. “Our first goal is to get to 50 annually, that’s our strategic plan, and then once we get that we’re going to continue to shoot for 100.”

The grant will allow the school to build its first expansion since the founding of the school in 2005. The expansion will include increasing the capacity for the current boat building and marine technician programs as well as adding a new marine electronics program.

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The marine electronics program will teach students how to operate and maintain the constantly evolving marine technology that helps ships to manually sail, dock and use GPS.

The expansion will also include the construction of a new class building and boathouse on the school’s campus, which will give students easier access to open water to help them train in a more hands-on environment.

“We’re building a new 10,000 square foot building immediately behind our current facility, and then we’re going to improve our docks, and also a boathouse so we’ll have two spots for boats to dock.” said Coates. “So that’s really great for our students, because we get our students out on the water, they’re driving boats, they’re docking boats, testing boats in the water. This is just going to really kind of elevate our whole program.”

For more information about the boat building school and its programs, visit their website.

This article originally appeared on The Sault News: Great Lakes Boat Building School plans for expansion with state grant