Bakersfield College bachelor’s graduate fast-tracked his path to high-paying career in industrial automation
With a mother with a doctorate and a father who teaches high school, Richard Van Horne always figured his educational career would follow a traditional path, culminating with credentials from a four-year university. What he didn’t expect was that his degree—a Bachelor’s of Science in industrial automation—would be earned at community college.
Now, Van Horne is earning a six-figure salary in a field that he didn’t even know existed until he enrolled at Bakersfield College. He graduated in 2018 as one of BC’s first seven industrial automation graduates.
“This partnership between my personality and brain and this degree of knowledge is the biggest game-changing decision I’ve ever made,” Van Horne says.
“This partnership between my personality and brain and this degree of knowledge is the biggest game-changing decision I’ve ever made.”
Richard Van Horne, Bakersfield College Baccalaureate Graduate in Industrial Automation
Now 31, Van Horne was a 22-year-old part-time truck driver making $12.50 an hour when he found out that Bakersfield was launching what was then the nation’s first and only bachelor’s program in industrial automation, whether it was in a community college or any of the nation’s four-year colleges.
As in Bakersfield, other institutions in the California Community College (CCC) system are offering more opportunities to earn bachelor’s degrees as part of the Baccalaureate Degree Program (BDP). This initiative ties into Vision 2030, a collaborative action plan overseen by the CCC’s Chancellor’s Office aimed at making education more equitable, accessible and affordable.
A Bakersfield native, Van Horne’s mother worked as faculty director at the college. Unsurprisingly, he enrolled at Bakersfield out of high school and earned an Associate of Arts degree two years later in political science. From there, his plan was to go on to Cal State Bakersfield for his bachelor’s.
Then, as it happens so often, life got in the way.
Van Horne dropped out of BC when an unplanned pregnancy forced him to get a job. Three years later, he found himself driving truck in Oceanside. That’s when he learned about and enrolled in the fledgling industrial automation program at his hometown community college.
The next thing Van Horne knew, he was tackling calculus and chemistry on his way to major-specific courses such as industrial design, system-robotics, project management, economic decision making and industrial and organizational psychology.
“Mostly,” Van Horne says of the theory of industrial automation, “it’s about doing the most work in the least amount of time, making the production process quicker and more efficient.”
With his degree in hand, Van Horne went to work as an engineering and maintenance manager for big farms and firms in the Central Valley before latching on this year as the electrical and instrumentation supervisor for GAF, the New Jersey-based, worldwide leader in the manufacture of roofing shingles.
With climate-charged superstorms striking homes across the country, business is booming, and Van Horne is earning—he makes $115,000 a year working for the GAF plant in Shafter.
And he’s only getting started.
“I want to be the general manager of a plant,” Van Horne says. “I think I can be that kind of a general manager of a large facility, or maybe even a director at the corporate level.”
The game-changer, he’ll always know, came at his local community college.
For more information about Bakersfield College’s Industrial Automation program, visit https://www.bakersfieldcollege.edu/academics/pathways/itt/industrial-automation/index.html. To learn more about Vision 2030, go to https://www.cccco.edu/About-Us/Vision-2030.
Written by Andy Furillo
| Regions | Classes & Topics |
|---|---|
| Central California | Automation – Careers in Business-Technology – Careers in Manufacturing-Construction |
