Dual language wood grading course to be held at NTC

ANTIGO — This week, Northcentral Technical College’s (NTC) Wood Technology Center will host a brief seminar focused mostly on lumber grading that will be held in both Spanish and English.

It will be the first dual language course NTC has ever hosted, according to Tim Kassis, a Wood Technology Center board member and the president of the educational division of the Lake States Lumber Association (LSLA), which is technically putting on the seminar.

“I don’t speak Spanish, but I have a translator,” said Kassis, who worked in lumber grading for 12 years and will serve as one of the instructors for the course. “We’ll have two translators there. So as I’m presenting the material, they’ll be able to translate it into Spanish.”

Grants the LSLA received from the Forest Products Lab in Madison and the DNR will fund the translators and textbooks for the course, which both Kassis and Wood Technology Center Director Logan Wells expect will contain a good number of Spanish-speaking students.

“We think there is a lot of demand for this, because there’s a lot of Spanish-speaking workers,” Kassis said. “My goal is to go ahead and expand this. We feel that because of the Spanish-speaking labor force, it’s very important that we are able to interpret for and train these people, even if they don’t speak our language.”

Kassis said he and other instructors will not be paid for teaching the three-day seminar, which will also include small presentations on kiln drying and manufacturing.

“The money that we make goes back into our education group and gets put out for public education for Trees for Tomorrow and some other causes,” Kassis said. “We’ve actually given money to the tech so they can bring students in. We’ve given money to Kemp Station up here from the DNR too. They bring grade school kids in to show them about wood products and things like that. But Trees for Tomorrow has gotten a lot from us.”

Kassis hopes the Wood Technology Center’s two year, comprehensive program can gain greater exposure as well.

“People graduating from the two year course are almost guaranteed a job. They’re often higher paying jobs too, not just minimum wage jobs,” he said. “So the two year course is really a great option as well.”

The dual language seminar will run June 18-20 this week.

For more information about NTC’s Wood Technology Center of Excellence, contact Wells at 715-623-7601, Ext. 7794 or wells@ntc.edu.