Berrien RESA and Lake Michigan College are working to build up their combined career and technical education program after announcing its creation last year.

In February of 2024, the partners, along with the Southwest Michigan Regional Chamber, announced that LMC was selling its building in Niles to RESA for $1 so it could be used as a centralized CTE facility. Since then, RESA Superintendent Eric Hoppstock tells us they’ve moved some healthcare apprenticeship students to the building and started seeking out partners for additional training programs.

“We are stitching together that structure,” Hoppstock said. “And so sometimes things happen behind the scenes while you’re getting that structure. So you go slow initially to go fast later. So that structure has been hammered out, and now it’s really about doing the marriage between apprentices and the sites or the sponsors that will have them on site to learn a trade.”

Hoppstock says they’ve been in talks with the electrical workers union in South Bend and are working toward heating and cooling apprenticeships. He says it’s important for employers to be engaged.

“For example, I know that Campbell Ford reached out to us and said, ‘Hey, we’re looking for some individuals we can run through the Ford Certification Program.’  So we’re linking up some students in that program.”

On a given day, Hoppstock says there might be 100 students in CTE programs learning at the Niles facility. The goal is to increase that by the hundreds as more apprenticeship programs are brought online.

Hoppstock notes CTE students around Berrien County are also trained at their schools and LMC’s campus.