JOBS Project speaker to address industry training

Grant EDC sponsors Wallace visit to area

COLUMBIA BASIN - Central Washington JOBS Project coordinators hope to hear how to meet area industrial employment needs from someone who's been where they are.

Guest speaker Kelly Wallace, adult education center director for the Newark, Ohio-based Career and Technology Education Centers of Licking County, or C-TEC, will speak to the project's members Friday from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., in Big Bend Community College's ATEC Building, Room 1855.

Wallace's appearance in the Columbia Basin is sponsored by the Grant County Economic Development Council, specifically for the JOBS Project to meet with local business and industry leaders, educators and other institutions of training, council communication and research manager Jon Smith explained.

Council Executive Director Terry Brewer heard Wallace speak at a national workforce development conference about the programs the Ohio center put in place for different groups of industries to create customized entry-level training programs. Such programs enabled the local community to receive training and jump to the top of the list of potential hires for the companies, Smith explained.

"The manufacturers worked as a group to develop, with the help of the college and training curriculum, so the manufacturers had some skin in the game," Smith explained. "The person taking the training had to pay a fee. It wasn't as expensive as a college course because it was also being partly paid for by the manufacturers. Very strict requirements for the courses, you're absent, do a no-show, you're out of the course."

But participants would know when they graduated they were first in line to get a good job at a facility where they have the opportunity to work their way up, Smith said. About 1,500 students have participated, he added, with a 98 percent retention rate.

"This is exactly the same kind of thing the JOBS Project training committee is looking to do - develop some kind of training that will apply universally to the skill sets required," Smith said. "A lot of the positions that are needed at manufacturing are the same needed at food processing, even transfer over to some of the high-technology businesses, so there's a lot of overlap in the skills needed in those different industries."

Wallace has more than 15 years of experience putting together programs to address the issue, Smith said, and can share his own pitfalls and things to look for, in the hopes of putting Columbia Basin efforts ahead.

"How can we combine our efforts to create a program," he said. "It might not be feasible for one industry or one business to do it themselves, but if everybody comes together, it can work."

The meeting is open to the public. Project Co-Chair Allan Peterson said industry people and educators should consider attending the meeting. The council and project would like to see decision makers in attendance at Friday's meeting.

"We've been talking about this, industry participation with a pool of money specifically for training," Peterson said. "This is a chance for us to see somebody who's actually done it. We don't have to totally reinvent the wheel, we can actually see something that's working and apply it here, if we can."

For more information, call Peterson at 509-793-2374 or Smith at 509-764-6579.