STRAC Institute

Students quickly master industry skills and earn certifications that make them highly valuable to their employers. STRAC Institute’s training program was born out of one veteran’s desire to build a business that would allow him to continue serving his country and helping his fellow veterans. In 2009 John Shepard founded Veterans Assembled electronics to fulfill Department of Defense contracts for modernizing electronics on legacy systems; one of those contracts was for the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, Rhode Island. Intent on hiring disabled veterans to do the design and manufacturing, Shepard designed a specialized curriculum to train veterans in skills essential to the electronics industry. Since 2010, our training mission has been to prepare service-disabled veterans for a sustained career. Our electronics school program is unique: immersion training in the classroom and lab is 40 hours a week for 4-5 months with a curriculum that is industry-driven and responsive to the evolving nature of employer demands. Our electronics training ensures graduates are certified in the knowledge and demonstrable skills common to the electronics industry and are leaders among their peers. In March 2020, after having graduated more than 365 disabled veterans, STRAC Institute was approved as a proprietary school across all sites and opened its doors to non-veterans for the first time. Today the STRAC Institute is open to everyone, non-veterans, and veterans alike. On the surface, the acronym STRAC highlights our program’s focus on Skills Training And Certification. But on a deeper level, the Army term “strac” describes a well-organized, well-turned-out soldier who can be depended on for good performance in any circumstance. That is exactly the type of employee we work hard to train, and as a result, exactly the type of person companies work hard to hire. STRAC Institute is headquartered in Providence, RI, and currently operates training centers in Florida and North Carolina as well.