The Institute for Advance Learning and Research and Danville Community College are collectively hiring 38 positions for the program.

DANVILLE, Va. (March 7, 2023) – The Accelerated Training in Defense Manufacturing (ATDM) program is hoping to fill 38 positions, including 24 instructors, within the next six months to support the program’s goals of rapidly training adult learners with the skills necessary to enter the defense industrial base. The program, which works to fill high-demand jobs producing parts to repair, upfit, and build submarines for the U.S. Navy, is led by the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research (IALR) as a public-private consortium with the U.S. Department of Defense, Danville Community College (DCC), Phillips Corporation, and the Spectrum Group in consultation with the defense industry. Full-time and seasonal intern positions are available at IALR as well as DCC.

Over the next year, the ATDM program will be hiring for positions that support recruitment, veteran recruitment and support, housing and community services, employment outreach, and program support. Additionally, IALR will further support the program by adding positions for grants and contracts specialists, curriculum development, training and technology coordination, and communications and marketing. IALR also plans to hire an Afghan Support Specialist to recruit, translate for, and support students within the Afghan population. A detailed list of employment opportunities is available at ATDM.org/join-our-team.

“These positions are an integral part of ATDM’s mission to quickly funnel workers to the defense industrial base with skill sets that position employers to meet the research and manufacturing demands of today’s military,” said Dr. Debra Holley, ATDM Director. “The experience of these newly hired professionals will equip the ATDM program to ramp up significantly in the next year to achieve ambitious goals set for the next two years.”

DCC also has job openings for instructor and technician positions in the fields of additive manufacturing, CNC machining, metrology, nondestructive testing, and welding—the trades promoted through ATDM.

“Danville Community College is proud to partner with the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research to support the continued growth of ATDM,” said Dr. Jerry Wallace, President of Danville Community College. “We are in the process of hiring an additional 14 instructors and technicians over the next 60 days to meet the needs of this exciting program and we anticipate that the number of jobs created through this initiative will only increase in the future.”

ATDM is being scaled as a national defense manufacturing pipeline that, when at full operation in 2024, will provide 800–1,000 qualified candidates to fill critical vacancies across the defense industrial base. Positions are needed to meet the demand, particularly as the program prepares to break ground on a future 100,000-square-foot training facility later this year.

ATDM was created to teach the skills needed for increasing military equipment production. In recent years, other countries have increased military technology production while the U.S. has remained stagnant. Recognizing the need to increase military production, the U.S. government also realized that manufacturing in the U.S. is now a mere 12% of the national workforce sector compared to the start of WWII, when approximately one-third of the U.S. workforce was in manufacturing. ATDM supports U.S. efforts to build a strong arsenal for defense as well as the trained workforce to build that arsenal.

Due to the importance of submarines in military defense, the U.S. Navy is supporting ATDM so students are trained in the skills needed to repair, upfit, and build submarines. These skills are transferable to other defense industry companies, as well. Students earn the skills for great-paying, in-demand defense industry jobs in these skilled trades:

• Additive Manufacturing
• CNC Machining
• Non-destructive Testing
• Quality Control Inspection (also known as Metrology)
• Welding

Professionals interested in applying for jobs at ATDM can visit ATDM.org/join-our-team to learn more. For an updated list of the open positions at Danville Community College, visit https://jobs.vccs.edu/. For an updated list of open positions at IALR, visit https://www.ialr.org/employment/.  

Folks who want to learn more about enrolling in ATDM program classes can go to https://atdm.org/atdm-enrollment-application.

About IALR

The Institute for Advanced Learning and Research serves Virginia as a regional catalyst for economic transformation through applied research, advanced learning, manufacturing advancement, conference center services, and economic development efforts. IALR’s major footprint focuses within Southern Virginia, including the counties of Patrick, Henry, Franklin, Pittsylvania, Halifax, and Mecklenburg along with the cities of Martinsville and Danville. For more information, visit www.ialr.org.

About ATDM

Accelerated Training in Defense Manufacturing is a prototype training platform for rapidly training skilled workers in key trades such as CNC machining and welding for employment in the defense industry. ATDM was developed as a public-private consortium between the DoD, the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research (IALR), Danville Community College (DCC), Phillips Corporation, and The Spectrum Group in consultation with the defense industry. IALR is leading a multi-year pilot project to test and evaluate ATDM as a training platform for regional training centers supporting the defense industrial base. The pilot project is funded through the National Imperative for Industrial Skills initiative which was launched in 2020 by the Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment Program Office (IBAS) in the office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment.

MEDIA CONTACT: Rachel Spencer, 540-798-6278, rachel@visitaccess.com.