Toyota Texas hosted a grand re-opening of its experience center and museum in San Antonio on Tuesday, pairing the event with an announcement of a $70,000 gift to support Alamo Colleges District students with scholarships.
“This gives them a great pathway for high-value employment right here in the South Side, right in their own community,” Palo Alto College President Robert Garza said. “It’s good for business and industry because we are going to be their No. 1 [source of] talent.”
Palo Alto College and St. Philip’s College will each be receiving $20,000 to support scholarships for their current students. The gift includes $10,000 for student advancement, $10,000 for career training and $10,000 for the district’s MOSAICO fundraising campaign, which benefits AlamoPromise students.
This is not the first time that Toyota contributes to Alamo Colleges, said Chancellor Mike Flores at the event. The colleges have received upwards of $1.6 million from Toyota since 2003. The manufacturing plant started production of Tundras and Sequoias in 2006. Next year, the plant will supply rear axles for these trucks, plus the Tacoma, which is assembled in Mexico.
“Our students are not derailed by their commitment or passion. They have academic ability and they have the will to pursue their chosen career,” Flores said. “What happens is that they get derailed by out of classroom challenges. And so this support in addition to scholarships helps to ensure that they stay on task.”
This most recent gift will support students in STEM fields — science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — which also include students in manufacturing and automotive programs that have been developed over the years with the help of local industry partners.
“Our relationship with Alamo College’s district is as long as our plant’s history. And we are proud to continue our support of Palo Alto and St. Philip’s as you prepare tomorrow’s workforce,” said Toyota Texas President Frank Voss.
St. Philip’s College led the way in the adoption of the TXFAME program, a national hands-on learning program developed in partnership with the Federation for Advanced Manufacturing Education (FAME).
Today, students who are part of TXFAME work with partner manufacturers like Toyota Texas and study at Alamo Colleges.
Alicia Lopez and Aydan Mendiola, both 19, are part of the current cohort of students in the Toyota Advanced Technology Manufacturing Academy. They signed up for the program while in high school with the goal of getting early work experience and today they are taking courses in manufacturing at Palo Alto College.
“I personally enjoy it because you’re taking from what you’re learning in college and you’re seeing how it works here at the plant itself,” Lopez said. “I’m a hands-on learner… so once they show me here, I start making those connections.”
Programmable Logic Controllers, PLC, is one example Mendiola said of a process he was always interested in but now he gets to see how that is utilized in the field.
“That’s pretty much the heart of any automated manufacturing process. It’s literally the brain of our manufacturing plant,” Mendiola said. “So we have PLC classes in college; we have robotics classes… And then we get to come to work and we get to apply it to actual real work.”
The morning of the announcement, Lopez and Mendiola both walked around the newly reopened experience center which offers a timeline of the company’s history, and gives visitors a behind-the-scenes view into how Toyota Tundra and Sequoia models are built here in San Antonio.
With the passing of the $987 million bond this May, Alamo Colleges are preparing to expand its spaces and access to many fields informed by the needs in the region. This includes in the manufacturing and automotive fields.
Through this bond, St. Philip’s College will expand its automotive program, one of the oldest in the region, with the construction of a $65 million Center for Automotive Technology. Palo Alto College will also add a $30 million Automotive (T-TEN Program) and Heavy Machinery Center to its roster.
These are part of the projects that are meant to strengthen the direct pipeline between a college certificate, degree or training program and better job opportunities for recent graduates or professionals seeking to “upskill.”
St. Philip’s College President Adena Williams Loston said these advancements to the programs allow the college to better respond to the needs of the students and the region by offering training that resonates with the required skills.
“This gives us an opportunity because we’re [moving toward] non-carbureted vehicles,” Loston said. “So our students need to have a work environment and a work space where they can work on electric vehicles … Everything has changed. So now it’s either a hybrid vehicle or an electric vehicle.”
