(HUTTO, Texas) – The Industrial Systems program at Texas State Technical College’s Williamson County campus is undergoing a transformation ahead of the fall semester.
The program will be known as Advanced Manufacturing Technology – Industrial Maintenance starting this fall. The program in Williamson County will continue to offer an associate degree and two certificates of completion. The program will offer night classes starting this fall along with its daytime offerings.
“Industrial maintenance technicians are the ones who keep any sort of manufacturing facility up and running,” said Roger Snow, TSTC’s dean of manufacturing. “All of the conveying systems, the hydraulics, pneumatics, the whole mechanical systems, these are the ones that keep it running.”
The program will relocate from the first floor to the third floor of the East Williamson County Higher Education Center in Hutto. Renovation work is scheduled to be completed before the fall semester starts on Tuesday, Sept 2.
The first-floor space could comfortably accommodate only 12 students at a time. With the move upstairs, the program will now be able to handle about 40 students at one time in 4,750 square feet of learning space.
“We will be getting new equipment to allow for more students,” said Joel McCracken, program team lead for the Industrial Systems program. “Our instructors are excited because we will not have to rearrange our lab area after each semester like we do now and we will have more classroom space.”
By fall 2026, the former Industrial Systems space will be repurposed as a mock clean room to mimic conditions in a semiconductor lab, Snow said. This will be part of a new Advanced Manufacturing Technology – Semiconductor program that will debut next year.
The Advanced Manufacturing Technology – Industrial Maintenance program will be moved again in 2027 to the new Advanced Manufacturing Center of Excellence currently under construction. Mitchell Ratliff, TSTC’s senior construction project manager, said the contractor has installed bases for storage containers and the construction office trailer at the jobsite.
“They should begin potholing for underground utilities next week as they will be installing the construction fencing at that time,” Ratliff said.
The program’s learning space is projected to accommodate about 120 students in the new building, Snow said.
“It is one of our highest-paying programs,” he said. “Students can start out (working) anywhere from $20 to $35 an hour. They make a very good living and accelerate into higher pay ranges in the company.”
Expanded learning spaces can mean more students can take classes and graduate. The program had more than 45 graduates from summer 2020 to spring 2025, according to TSTC’s Business Analytics and Reporting department.
Registration continues for the fall semester at TSTC. For more information, go to tstc.edu.