LOUISA — The Success Xpress, a mobile training facility built into a 53-foot truck trailer, will be stationed in Louisa from Monday through April 20 to provide students enrolled in the Kentucky Junior Coal Academy at Lawrence County High School access to high-quality training in key mining skills using the industry’s most advanced technology.

The mobile training facility features a state-of-the-art classroom outfitted with a three-dimensional computerized mining simulator and a hands-on lab area featuring electrical training panels exactly like those on actual mining equipment. It is owned and operated by the Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program (EKCEP) Inc., a nonprofit agency that administers workforce development programs in eastern Kentucky.

The truck can be driven to remote coal mines, colleges, high schools, or any other location where training is needed. This mobility allows students like those in the Junior Coal Academy to get an early look at coal mining while in high school and also allows working miners to train on the Success Xpress for certifications in essential high-skill positions (mine electricians, METs, equipment operators, foremen, etc.) at their work sites, reducing the impact of training on their companies’ productivity.

Crawford Blakeman, EKCEP business solutions manager, said in a news release that the Success Xpress makes the best possible training and instruction accessible to working miners and students at any location in the EKCEP service area.

“Wherever there’s a need at a coal mine for more skilled and better trained miners, Success Xpress will be ready to literally drive that training to their front door,” Blakeman said. “Being able to present this training in such a mobile way allows workers to train for advancement more efficiently with much less impact on company productivity.”

The Junior Coal Academy is part of the Kentucky Coal Academy, a coal training initiative that offers extensive miner training programs at Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) locations in Cumberland, Hazard, Madisonville, Pikeville and Hager Hill. The Junior Coal Academy offers high school students training that leads to employment in the industry immediately after graduation, or prepares them to pursue college degrees in engineering and other mining-related programs.

Bringing the Success Xpress to high school students who are already planning for careers in coal is a natural extension of EKCEP’s efforts to help the state’s largest industry replenish its dwindling and aging workforce, according to EKCEP executive director Mable Duke.

“The coal industry has indicated time and again that it needs more trained, skilled miners,” Duke said. “Success Xpress allows EKCEP to help address that need, and its mobility allows us to bring specialized training to the region’s miners and students in a way that has never been seen before.”

The simulator in the Success Xpress classroom includes a virtual reality headset and handheld control panel. A student can wear the headset and experience the sights and sounds of operating a continuous mining machine to cut coal from the walls of an underground mine. Other students in the class can watch the operator’s progress on a 40-inch flat-screen display.

Distance-learning technology aboard the Success Xpress allows mining courses to be taught by specially qualified instructors at remote locations and transmitted to students in the mobile classroom. Remote-controlled cameras in the mobile unit allow the class to interact with the remote instructor in real time.

Any sessions taught by instructors — whether on board the Success Xpress or from a remote location — can be digitally recorded, saved, and replayed on demand.

For more information about EKCEP and the Success Xpress, call Blakeman at (606) 436-5751, or visit ekcep.org.