NCTC partners with Safran Seats on welding and machining bootcamps

GAINESVILLE, Texas — North Central Texas College has partnered with Safran Seats, one of Gainesville’s largest employers, to offer a series of summer welding and machining bootcamps designed to meet rising demand for skilled aerospace manufacturing workers in Cooke County. The bootcamps, developed jointly by NCTC’s Continuing Education and Industrial Technology departments, provide both foundational and advanced training in machining and welding. Topics include hands-on equipment operation, blueprint reading, and technical mathematics — skills identified as high-priority needs within the region’s manufacturing sector. Safran Seats, the Gainesville-based division of French aerospace conglomerate Safran Group, manufactures aircraft seating systems for commercial and business-class aviation. The company is one of the largest private employers in Gainesville and has posted more than a dozen skilled positions in recent weeks — including industrial engineers, certification engineers, design engineers, test engineers, and a fabrication manager — signaling continued expansion of its local workforce. Sara Flusche, NCTC’s dean of instruction for Continuing Education and eLearning, and Darrell Smith, dean of instruction for Career and Technical Education – Industrial Technology, worked directly with Safran Seats to build curricula that align with the company’s workforce needs. “These trainings offer skill sets that provide students a viable education as well as the opportunity to advance and be successful in their employment roles,” Flusche said. “It is important to our future workforce that we invest in technical training addressing the skills in demand today. We work to define training programs for both large and small businesses and industry partners across all our service areas.” The summer bootcamps establish a pathway for continued learning through Fall 2026 and into Spring 2027, giving participants a structured route from entry-level certification to more advanced technical roles. For information about NCTC’s Industrial Technology and workforce training programs, visit nctc.edu/programs/continuing-education/ or nctc.edu/programs/cte/.