MARC JACOBS
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Chamberlain Shive has always liked working on machines. He started with cars but soon decided he wanted to tackle something bigger.
“I didn’t really enjoy cars, so I wanted to move to bigger and better stuff,” Shive said.
That interest brought him to the John Deere technician training program developed by Hutchinson Community College and PrairieLand Partners. Students build their skills at the college's South Campus before moving to PrairieLand’s Hutchinson location to work on John Deere equipment.
For PrairieLand, the program offers a way to develop the technicians it hopes to hire. For students, it offers training, help with expenses, and a job after graduation.
“We’re always looking for employees. We’re looking for a lot of techs,” said Jason Benge, manager of the PrairieLand Partners location. “We don’t just want every tech. We want a certified tech.”
Hutchinson Community College President Dr. Tricia Paramore said the partnership grew out of conversations that began in spring 2023. The training space at PrairieLand opened shortly before classes began in August, and the college and PrairieLand hosted a ribbon cutting and open house on Friday to mark the partnership. The first group of students is using it this school year.
“You can’t grow the workforce; you can’t grow the economy without partnerships in your community,” Paramore said. “I think this is just another example of great partnerships and the value that it’s going to add to our economy and to our local community and to the state.”
Sheldon Stewart, a department co-chair in the Agriculture, Business, Computers and Technology at Hutchinson Community College, has watched the program move from planning to hands-on instruction. The college is in its second year of running the curriculum, he said, while this is the first year students have trained at the PrairieLand site.
“It’s off the ground. It’s running,” Stewart said. “We got students in the seats in the classrooms, and we’re in our second year of running the curriculum. So, I’m excited.”
The training begins at South Campus, where students learn the fundamentals of diesel mechanics. Stewart said they work on combines, swathers and planters and tear down diesel engines and powertrains. In the second year, students move to the PrairieLand location to work on John Deere machines and diagnostics.
“They’re getting that basic foundation of what a mechanic, if you will, would be doing,” Stewart said. “And then when they come up here the second year, they’re working on the green machines. They’re doing diagnostics.”
Stewart said five students are training at the PrairieLand site. Of the 11 students at South Campus, eight are in the John Deere program and three are in the college’s other diesel training track.
PrairieLand hopes to keep groups at about 10 to 12 students, Benge said. That would allow instructors to spend enough time with each student while giving them experience with the equipment they could work on after graduation.
“We want to give the best training that we can to all of our students,” he said.
Benge said PrairieLand covers participating students’ college expenses and provides money toward tools. The company expects graduates to work for PrairieLand for three years. He described the arrangement as a way for students to earn an associate degree and move directly into a career.
The program is drawing students with different connections to agriculture. Shive said he did not grow up in an agricultural family. Fellow student Devin Penner said his family farms west of Inman. Penner said the nearby training lets him work at the PrairieLand location in McPherson and drive to Hutchinson for school.
For Stewart, the sight of students working through the curriculum is the clearest sign of how far the partnership has come.
“I never would have thought it would have turned out the way it has,” he said.