CONWAY, SC (WBTW) – Horry-Georgetown Technical College is getting ready for some summer projects worth more than $500,000, and one of the projects will help pave the way for a new diesel engineering program.
HGTC will start the program in the fall, with classes at the former station No. 23 for Horry County Fire Rescue. The building is near the college’s Conway campus at the end of Victory Lane.
HGTC bought the facility earlier this year, after Horry County Fire Rescue moved out.
“About the same time was when companies were beginning to talk with us about the need to train diesel mechanics,” said HGTC president Dr. Marilyn Fore. “So that seemed like a perfect place.”
The school says about 18 students a year will train in the program.
HGTC says there’s demand for diesel engineers, with more than 4,000 job openings statewide, including about 120 in Horry and Georgetown counties.
“A large component is going to be students in the labs actually working on the diesel engines, servicing them, making them run efficiently, appropriately and completely rebuilding them,” said Brandon Haselden, who’s the dean of academic affairs at HGTC.
Haselden will oversee the diesel engineering program and says a glaring problem caused by heavy fire trucks is a cracked driveway that will be resurfaced.
“Oftentimes, they’re sitting in the yard on concrete slabs and all that weight’s got to go somewhere,” Haselden said. “The concrete just hadn’t been able to stand up to it.”
That isn’t the only worn out surface at HGTC. The school is also doing hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs to sidewalks, parking lots and walkways on its Grand Strand campus in Myrtle Beach’s Market Common.
Dr. Fore says infrastructure built in the 1950s for the Myrtle Beach Air Force Base needs to be replaced, especially because she says enrollment has increased in the last few years.
“We are trying to keep pace with the economic needs and job openings in the community,” Dr. Fore said.
Horry County is also helping HGTC fund the projects.
The school says it expects to complete the work on both campuses by the beginning of the fall semester.
