SMS group in North America and Arkansas Northeastern College finalized an agreement that will create the Arkansas Steelmaking Academy (ASA). Set to begin offering classes in 2019, ASA will be housed in the college’s 8,500-square-meter Center for Allied Technology currently under construction. The facility, scheduled to open in August, includes technologically equipped seminar classrooms and hands-on training laboratories for steel technology.

With the opening of Big River Steel, northeastern Arkansas has one of the highest regional concentrations of steelmaking in the country. SMS group opened a local workshop in Osceola in 2017. Arkansas Northeastern College is currently one of a few colleges in the nation offering steel-industry technology programs and the only one in the state.