Walking into the Northland Workforce Training Center’s state-of-the-art facility in Buffalo, one may feel like something life-changing is happening. For the students utilizing it, the teaching is just that: life-changing. It’s setting them up for high-paying, advanced manufacturing and energy careers.

The director of admissions, Dr. Carolyn Storms-Stoltman, actually left her job when she heard about what Northland was doing. Now she works there, and loves all of the machines — like CNC, which makes the metal parts for other machines. 

“They start with a block of metal… You could make a bike-frame in here. You could make parts for an airplane in here,” says Storms-Stoltman. 

Making parts for an airplane sounds pretty advanced, but that’s exactly the kind of skills that Northland Training Center — Governor Cuomo’s signature workforce program under the Buffalo Billion initiative — is providing. 

While Storms-Stoltman was giving Spectrum News a tour of the center, we met a welding instructor teaching a virtual summer class for high school juniors and seniors. It’s all thanks to a partnership between Buffalo Public Schools and Mayor Byron Brown’s Summer Youth Program. 

“They don’t have this sort of exposure unless we give it to them, so as we move on from welding, we’re going to go through different courses. They’re going to find something that they enjoy. And if they don’t find something that they enjoy, they might find inspiration to find something they enjoy,” says James Piazza, welding instructor.

Piazza adds that this is a doorway that opens up that hopefully stays open for a long time. To learn more about all of the opportunities that the Northland Training Center has to offer, visit https://northlandwtc.org/