John I. Smith Charities has contributed $150,000 to the Greenville Tech Foundation over the past two years. The assistance has been used to outfit a meeting room at the college’s Gene Haas Center for Manufacturing Innovation (CMI), which has been renamed the John I. Smith Charities Multi-Purpose Room.
Used frequently for board meetings, college training and symposia, and as the college hosts school groups, the John I. Smith Charities Multi-Purpose Room can also be rented by outside groups to host trainings and meetings. Equipment provided by the gift meets audio-visual and presentation requirements including streaming capabilities. The room’s furnishings including desks, chairs, and presenter podium were also purchased with funding provided by John I. Smith Charities.
“The Center for Manufacturing Innovation is one of the important things Greenville Tech does,” said Jeff Smith, president of the board of John I. Smith Charities. “No society can endure forever without manufacturing. When we lost the textile mills in Upstate SC, we lost a lot of our manufacturing jobs, and Greenville Tech is helping to rebuild that. We think that’s wonderful.”
“Thanks to the generosity of John I. Smith Charities, our multi-purpose room is meeting a need for area employers and providing a space for the college to interact with our partners,” said Dr. Keith Miller, president of Greenville Technical College. “While the advanced manufacturing equipment at the CMI is what people may notice first, the meeting space and equipment that completes it is just as critical.”