Awarded in June 2013

Ebner Furnaces Inc. of Wadsworth is a key player in Adult & Community Education Trade and Industry program job placement. Ebner has been manufacturing industrial furnaces since 1986, and currently has 87 employees at its Wadsworth facilities.

Ebner recently hired two Adult Education full-time students, both of which are in their state-approved apprenticeship program. Several WCSCC student sdid their externships at Ebner, and currently there are seven apprentices at Ebner. They are looking to hire two more apprentices, which will put them in the double digits.

Tom Krueger, vice president of manufacturing, serves on the Adult Ed T&I advisory committee. Ebner is a significant donor of metals and other materials to the high school and adult education welding programs, and has provided tours of their facilities, job shadowing and mentor our full-time T&I graduates, while sponsoring their continuing education.

In a reverse scenario, Jeff Mehling, one of Ebner’s former apprentices and an Adult Ed welding student, is now the high school and an adult welding instructor at the Career Center.

Ebner Furnaces participated in last year’s Job Fair and Open House. One of our part time Adult Ed instructors got a job lead from Tom Krueger, and now has a full-time position at Arch Tech in Medina.

“The best advertising Ebner has done is spread the good word on our training offerings,” said Adult T&I Coordinator Jim Young. “They have a manufacturing consortium of companies they associate with which has resulted in two other companies” using the Career Center as an employee training site: Scot Industries Wooster and Grace Automation in Killbuck. Ebner has recently received a grant and Bruce Steiner, high school and Adult Ed precision machining instructor, will be facilitating an on-site jig and fixture training course.

“It has been a pleasure initially starting to work with quality assurance manager Gunter Frishherz and now Tom Krueger,” said Mr. Young. “They have given me the privilege of sitting in on meetings with their top management, workforce development representatives, and the state apprentice representative. We collaborated together to bring their program to state standards and have a great working relationship.”

We thank Ebner Furnaces for their continued support of career and technical education in this area.