Winthrop plans to use the money to create a new engineering program to bring new students in.
By Hudson Mize
Staff Writer
News
Winthrop will receive a $250,000 grant from the city of Rock Hill to help launch its new manufacturing degree program.
The grant was announced on Sep. 15 at a press conference at the Rock Hill City Hall. It will come out of Rock Hill’s Economic Development Fund to encourage job growth in the York County region.
An equal amount has been given to York Tech, which plans to use the grant to help develop South Carolina’s first life science training facility.
The reasoning behind this grant aligns with the Economic Development Fund’s program to offer various methods to support job creation, business development and investment, and improve the overall quality of life for Rock Hill and its residents.
“Education is what will make our community what we want it to be over our lifetimes,” Mayor of Rock Hill John Gettys said. “[Education] is the silver bullet that will change Rock Hill.”
Using the grant, Winthrop will establish S.C.’s first bachelors program in advanced manufacturing engineering.
Advanced manufacturing engineering is the process of using innovative technologies and methods, such as artificial intelligence, to make manufacturing more efficient, sustainable and competitive.
A key element of the program, composite materials, aid in the process to increase performance characteristics, such as strength and durability of machines and other automated processes.
Currently, no public four-year degree university in S.C. has the degree. There is also no four-year engineering program in the Rock Hill region.
“We have been incredibly busy over the last few years adding workforce driven programs: artificial intelligence, aviation, health sciences, and software engineering,” said President of Winthrop, Edward Serna.
The purpose of these programs is to create a higher population of diverse students while meeting industry needs.
“All of these programs over the last few years have laid the foundation for advanced manufacturing engineering,” Serna said.
Winthrop’s presentation highlighted the various corporations and businesses that are entering the York County area for the past 25 years. These companies hold jobs that students seeking manufacturing degrees could get a career in.
Some listed companies are Octapharma, Boeing, Atlas Copco, Bosch and Nucor.
Octapharma, a wide range biopharmaceutical business with over 40 manufacturing sites and offices worldwide, pledged an announcement on July 23 to invest $1.5 billion in a biomedical campus with plans to hire around 1,500 employees.
Winthrop’s Provost Sebastian Van Delden said that university administrators have visited and spoken with industrial manufacturing companies about the new degree.
“We visited Atlas Copco a couple weeks ago, visited New Corps, visited Cummins, and time and time again, all of these companies were very impressed, very excited about the advanced manufacturing engineering curriculum that we are about to roll out,” Van Delden said.
The curriculum that a student of advanced manufacturing engineering would take are those that focus in engineering, computing, physical and material sciences, along with mathematics, statistics, and data science.
According to the SC Department of Commerce website, the Palmetto State has averaged manufacturing employment growth of more than 17% over the last ten years.
Another reason Winthrop has begun to put a concentration on creating engineering programs, such as aviation, was due to a recent market analysis done by the consultant firm Gray Associates.
The market analysis looked into student demand, employer demand and competitive intensity in the job market.
Serna said that with the results of their research, “The top 15 programs that we didn’t have on our portfolio that we needed to have were all in engineering.”
The program will require approval from the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. Their meeting will occur next spring.
Winthrop plans to have their first students enroll in the new program in the fall 2027 school year.
“[Winthrop] has been working very hard, [. . .] they’ve been taking deliberate steps to be ready for the workforce we knew was coming,” Gettys said.
The mayor of Rock Hill finished the press conference with a call to action.
“[The grant] is not going to pay for it all. And if you are an employer of some significance, where you need engineers, and you need professionals [. . .] a responsibility I think we all have [is] to see this growth here to invest and be part of that.”
