Northeast State gets new RCAM control room lab

KINGSPORT, Tenn. (WJHL) – Northeast State Community College has opened a new control room training lab at its Regional Center for Advanced Manufacturing (RCAM).

The RCAM is located in Kingsport, and the 26,000-square-foot training facility equips students to navigate the local manufacturing arena.

“This is an operator apprenticeship control room,” Northeast State Executive Director of Economic and Workforce Development Blake Montgomery told News Channel 11. “So our chemical operators and industrial operators in plants would use this room to learn how to remotely operate equipment.”

Northeast State instructors said the former control room training lab was much smaller and only featured two computers.

“We had the smaller room, [and] we could only do like two at a time,” said instrumentation and distillation instructor Sam Browder. “Plus the fact you had to do part of the class in one room and then you had to change rooms to come to another room where the other part was.”

Montgomery said classes were actually being delivered in five different rooms, which the control room lab improvements will help consolidate.

The new lab was created thanks to a Higher Education Emergency Relief (HEERF) Grant. The grant also allowed the RACM to get new equipment and computers.

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