An aerospace professional development center will open at Wright State University to fill the gap of employers searching for hard-to-find qualified employees in an industry losing large chucks of its workforce to retirements, officials said.

The center will open at the Wright State Research Institute this month, said state Sen. Chris Widener, R-Springfield.

Its going to be a pretty robust, dynamic center, he said. We felt like employers tell us we have jobs, but we cant find the people properly trained and qualified.

Wright State will work with aerospace and defense contractors and the government on the initiative. A formal announcement is expected today.

Widener said despite fears of automatic, across-the-board defense cuts next January, certain kinds of work will continue to be a priority in military aerospace. Ohio Aerospace Industry President Michael L. Heil said commercial aviation, meanwhile, faces explosive growth.

The aerospace industry faces potential employer shortages as baby boomers become eligible for retirement and fewer younger workers enter the field. More than half the employees at the top 20 aerospace firms are eligible to retire by 2016, said Susan Lavrakis, Aerospace Industries Association workforce director in Arlington, Va.

Thats an awful lot of expertise to replace in any time frame, said Dan Stohr, an AIA spokesman.

Ohio had 15,992 workers in the aerospace industry in March with an average weekly wage of $1,796, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, however, the states largest single site employer had just over 29,000 employees at the end of 2011.

Aerospace jobs often require a science, technology, engineering or math background and the ability to get a U.S. security clearance to work on national security-related programs. In the Dayton region, theres a shortage of systems, radio frequency and software engineers and cyber-security experts, but it has a fairly healthy supply of workers in the sensors, advanced materials and manufacturing sectors, said Kerry D. Taylor, director of the Ohio Aerospace Hub of Innovation & Opportunity. The new center could help bridge the skills gap in aerospace, he said.

Finding qualified blue and white collar workers is a common refrain among aerospace employers, Heil said.

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Aerospace workforce center will open at Wright State