Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf recently visited Lehigh Carbon Community College, Schnecksville, to discuss trucking and manufacturing positions with local company team leaders and students.

Wolf was introduced by LCCC President Dr. Ann Bieber, who helped lead discussion topics.

Upon his arrival at the college, Wolf, Bieber and LCCC Board of Trustees Chairwoman Roberta Marcus toured the commercial truck driver training facilities and the college’s new manufacturing mobile unit.

This mobile unit helps prepare workers for higher level jobs in manufacturing.

CDL Program Director John Craven answered questions from Wolf and discussed what the student drivers do.

Instructors Don Worman and Tom Bux discussed the mobile manufacturing lab.

As Wolf finished his tour, he and Bieber walked to the Community Services Center for a roundtable discussion.

There, he discussed the importance of truck driving, manufacturing and their current needs.

He also spoke with current and former LCCC students including Matt Romanyshyn, manufacturing student and employee at FlexLink, Armando Caraballo, manufacturing student and employee at Equipto, Jessica Petresky, CDL program graduate and current CDL instructor, and Deverri Santiago, CDL student.

Bieber discussed Wolf’s visit to the college with The Press.

“We were just thrilled the governor chose to come to the Lehigh Valley and certainly to Lehigh Carbon Community College,” Bieber said. “It shows he really appreciates all of the work and the efforts of the business community as well as the education community here in the Lehigh Valley.

“We have such a strong partnership to insure we have strong economic development in the Lehigh Valley.

“And certainly, two of the areas that are certainly instrumental in strong economic development is CDL and advanced manufacturing and that’s why he chose to come here - to focus on how hard we are training the students, how are people coming in from the local community to be retrained and what are the job opportunities there for them after they receive training.”