SC Ports Authority Grant to SCC

Spartanburg Community College received a $2,500 grant from the SC Ports Authority to support the college’s commercial driver’s license program. The grant will fund equipment purchases to enhance the college’s CDL simulation lab by allowing all students to view the simulation programs while one student operates the simulator.

Randall Parnell, SCC's CDL training coordinator, says “This grant allowed us to purchase additional equipment that gives students on the outside of the simulator the opportunity to observe someone training inside the simulator. This additional observation time offers an enhanced learning experience for the students, and we have already seen an improvement in student test scores because of this enhancement.”

The original 2020 purchase of the state-of-the-art CDL simulation system was made possible through a Workforce Opportunity for Rural Communities grant from the U.S. Department of Labor. The equipment allows students to experience a wide variety of situations that cannot be accurately reproduced in training, such as extreme weather, dangerous inclines, or heavy traffic driving and reduces damage to truck clutches during shifting training.

Transportation employees continue to be in high demand all over the country, and the COVID-19 pandemic has proven that truck drivers are essential to our nation's well-being. CDL simulation equipment increases the quality of truck driving training, as well as the number of students SCC can accommodate and ensures that students are prepared for a variety of real-world scenarios.

SCC’s CDL class A is a five-week program that includes 160 documented instructional hours on the following topics:
Orientation
Pre-trip Inspection
Coupling and Uncoupling
Straight-line Backing
Alley Dock Backing
Parallel Parking
Shifting and Maneuvering
Road Driving
Safety
Defensive Driving
Log Book
DOT Rules and Regulations
CDL Examination Preparation and Testing
Job Placement Assistance

Classes are held at SCC's Tyger River Campus in Duncan, Monday through Thursday, from 8:00 am - 5:00 pm, with night driving hours scheduled as necessary to meet state requirements.

For more information, visit the SCC website at https://www.sccsc.edu/cce/cdl.php.

Photos are available for download via SCC's Flickr account: www.flickr.com/CDL-Photos