Anyone who has ever spent a summer night in Overton County with a broken air conditioner, waiting on a technician whose schedule was already full for the week, understands something that employers across the Upper Cumberland have been saying for years, which is that there are simply not enough people trained to do this work and that those who can do it will never want for a job. That is the need TCAT Upper Cumberland set out to meet when it brought its Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration program back to the Livingston campus on Hi Tech Drive, giving students from Overton County the chance to learn one of the most in-demand trades in the region without having to leave home to do it.

It is a homecoming of sorts, because the Livingston campus offered HVAC training years ago before the program moved to Jackson County, and since then a student from Overton County who wanted to enter the field has had to make the drive to Gainesboro or Crossville to do it. Bringing it home took the kind of cooperation our community does well, with Overton County securing a $50,000 ThreeStar grant from the state to help the program get started, the Tennessee Board of Regents approving its return, and TCAT Upper Cumberland President Cliff Wightman, who has pointed to a serious shortage of HVAC technicians across the region, choosing to add the program in Livingston while keeping it in Jackson County as well.

What students find when they walk through the door is a program built around doing the work with their own hands, beginning with shop safety, electricity, and installation and moving on through motors and controls, gas and electric heat, heat pumps, and commercial refrigeration, until they are able to troubleshoot, repair, and install the systems that keep our homes, churches, schools, and businesses comfortable in every season. The full program runs about sixteen months and 1,728 hours, and along the way students earn nationally recognized credentials, including the EPA certification required to handle refrigerants, an OSHA safety card, and a series of HVAC Excellence certifications, with certificates awarded at earlier milestones for those who are ready to go to work sooner.

It is also one of the more practical investments a person can make in their own future, since tuition and fees for the entire program come to $8,609, new students are able to enroll every month as space allows, and state programs such as Tennessee Promise and Tennessee Reconnect may cover the cost of tuition for those who qualify. What waits on the other side is even more encouraging, because President Wightman has said that most TCAT students have a job lined up before they ever finish their program, and HVAC graduates in particular tend to go to work for local companies or to strike out on their own, which means that some of the students training on Hi Tech Drive today will be the small business owners our Chamber welcomes tomorrow.

The benefit to a community like ours is easy to see, because every home that gets built, every restaurant that opens on the square, and every industry we work to recruit depends on people who know how to keep the heat and the air running, and every one of those jobs is a career that allows a young person to build a good life right here in Overton County instead of somewhere else. We are grateful to the instructors and staff at TCAT Upper Cumberland for the work they do to prepare our neighbors for those careers, and we are proud that one more of them can now begin in Livingston.

If you or someone you know has been looking for a skilled trade with steady demand and a short path to a paycheck, we hope you will take a closer look at the HVAC program at TCAT Upper Cumberland at Livingston, located at 740 Hi Tech Drive, by visiting tcatuppercumberland.edu or emailing admissions@tcatuppercumberland.edu.

Chamber Spotlight is a new feature from the Livingston/Overton County Chamber of Commerce, sharing the stories of the businesses, organizations, and people that make our community what it is.