A Sauk Rapids manufacturer is ready to help students learn.
The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development gave Pinnacle Climate Technologies $50,000 to work in partnership with St. Cloud State University, the manufacturing company announced Friday.
The $50,000 teaching grant is part of DEED’s Minnesota Job Skills Partnership, where participating businesses partner with an accredited educational institution to provide training specific to that business.
Sauk Rapids-based Pinnacle Climate Technologies, which manufactures climate control products, will collaborate with the university’s Professional and Continuing Education department, or PACE, to help train or retrain employees and expand their work opportunities.
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The new trainings will begin in January, Pinnacle’s marketing manager Diana Granneman said, with tools for employees across the company.
“I just think it helps to bolster our employment status, our name in the community,” she said. “I hope people will look more toward Pinnacle as a workplace in the future based on knowing that these things are available to people that work here.”
Some of the content will include leadership training for manufacturing floor and office staff, as well as mental health first aid training for human resources staff. Manufacturing leaders will also receive operational excellence training.
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The MJSP grants are meant to strengthen company workforces, provide workers with transferable skills and expand SCSU’s programming that can help local businesses, according to a press release about the grant award.
Last month, Pinnacle Climate Technologies also received an Innovation Award from the Greater St. Cloud Development Corporation for its new Heat Hog portable propane heaters.
This article originally appeared on St. Cloud Times: Pinnacle Climate Technologies, St. Cloud State win workforce grant