This morning, Aug. 21, the Public Schools of Robeson County celebrated the opening of the new Robeson Career and Technical Education Center and Robeson Planetarium and Science Center (Robeson CTEC). 

The nearly 110,000-square-foot, $87.2 million investment was designed by SfL+a Architects and built by Metcon Construction. The project was made possible through a combination of state, county and local investment, including $62 million from North Carolina's Needs-Based Public School Capital Fund.

The facility is designed to connect public education directly with workforce needs by giving high school students hands-on training, opportunities to earn industry-recognized credentials and pathways into high-demand careers.

“This particular curriculum is looked at as the elective that [students] can choose as part of the career and technical education programming, and we currently, in this facility, have 396 seats available with all the classrooms. It is a magnet school. So we bring a group in the morning and a group in the afternoon. We bus them from their base school. Ultimately, once we get business and industry, where we’re going to do reverse internships, we hope to have about 500 in the morning and 500 in the afternoon,” shared CTE Director Herman Locklear.

Robeson CTEC will prepare students in areas including Mechatronics, Welding, Automotive Technology, Drone Technology, EMT, Culinary Arts, Computer and Network Engineering, Drafting Engineering, Carpentry, Masonry, Plumbing, Electrical Systems and digital media. The facility also includes industry labs designed to create opportunities for employers to help train students and develop their future workforce. 

“There’s a lot of young minds out there that need direction, and this is where they can find it,” shared Locklear.

As North Carolina employers continue to face demand for skilled workers, the center represents a major investment in developing that talent pipeline at the high school level. It also supports the state's broader educational attainment efforts, including the myFutureNC goal of having 2 million North Carolinians ages 25–44 hold an industry-valued credential or postsecondary degree by 2030.

“Give a young person a skill, and you can change their future. Give them a career, and you can change a family, change families, enough families, and you can change the community,”  shared President and CEO of Metcon Construction Aaron Thomas.

Plans for the center date back to 2012, sitework began in 2023, and the project is now moving from renderings to reality as it prepares to welcome students for the 2026-2027 school year. The new planetarium and science center replaces the facility lost following Hurricane Matthew and features a state-of-the-art projection system for immersive STEM learning. 

“When everybody in our county works together, huge things can happen,” added Thomas, a proud Robeson County native.