By Alaina Denean Deshazo
The Selma Times-Journal

Students in the Wallace Community College Selma electricity class will now have some hands-on real world devices to train with thanks to Pine Belt Wireless.

Pine Belt donated two commercial telecommunications power cabinets to the class as a way of giving back to the community and to better educate the next generation of electrical workers in Selma and Dallas County.

“We are a local company, we are very committed to our area and are always looking at ways to help. Because if it’s good for the community, it’s good for our business,” said Kevin Grass, director of sales and marketing for Pine Belt. “We might have been able to sell it for salvage, we might have been able to sell it on the reseller market, but instead we chose to donate it to Wallace so that their students can use it, get hands on experience and improve their skills and be more employable in the area.”

Eric Rogers, electrical instructor at Wallace, said he is thankful for Pine Belt giving them the equipment to help his students.

“We are very thankful. The equipment is great, and we really, really appreciate it because they will be able to work on some real world equipment instead of just lab trainers,” Rogers said. “But we’re really appreciative of them taking the initiative to want to be on the advisory committee and be part of the program and make the program grow and just make it better in our local area.”

Rogers said they have an advisory committee at the college that businesses can be a member of to help advise the department and help them grow.

“Throughout the state right now, the Office of Workforce Development is pushing for us to get as many credentials as we can in students hands … and work with local companies and other places around our area to build internships and to get these local companies on our advisory committee,” Rogers said.

“Pine Belt has stepped up to the plate and they’re donating some cell tower equipment to us that we can use in the lab and get them to wire and rewire.”

Rogers said he is excited for students as they begin working with the new equipment.

“It’s a real world piece of equipment. It has DC batteries inside of it to keep it running, it has communication parts, it has an electrical panel in there they can wire and rewire,” Rogers said.

“The good thing about it is, it’s going to look just like a piece of equipment they will run into in the real world.”