Graduation Day

MOSES LAKE — A last chance for success in life.

That’s how Columbia Basin Job Corps Civilian Conservative Center Director Maynard Spell described what the center does as it trains young people for work in the construction trades, building maintenance, managing offices, cooking in professional kitchens, and being nurses and caregivers.

It’s also one reason he said Friday’s public graduation ceremony — the first since lockdowns and restrictions were imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 — was so important.

“The graduation symbolizes the burden of hardship that (our students) dealt with prior to coming here,” Spell said. “Upon arriving here, succeeding and meeting their goals, this graduation is the closure of a successful chapter and the start of another chapter in their lives.”

Eight students — Diego Alcarez-Clymer, Bridgette Davis, Renee Murphy, Yulia Orduno-Hernandez, Bryen Padilla, David Pruneda, Dylan Rich and Suzanne Vargas — received their graduation certificates Friday. Most are planning on pursuing more vocational education, including programs at Big Bend Community College, though a few are hoping to put what they’ve learned at Job Corps to use in the work world.

“I wanted a better concept of what it is to be a nurse,” said Murphy, who completed the center’s certified nursing assistant program and plans to start looking for work when she returns home to Klamath Falls, Oregon. “I like helping people, and I’ve been told that I’m really good at helping people.”

The program was challenging, Murphy said, but she thinks it’s prepared her for work and for life.

“I’m very proud of her,” said Murphy’s mother Jennifer Hileman, who came all the way from Klamath Falls to watch her daughter graduate.

The federal Job Corps program was created in 1964 and deliberately modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps, a 1930s-era New Deal relief program that paid unemployed young people stipends to work on federal projects while also providing them an education. In the current Job Corps program, students aged 16-24 can learn skilled trades — everything from carpentry to culinary — as well as basic life skills and can even earn high school diplomas if they don’t already have one. While most of the Job Corps’s 121 centers are run by the U.S. Department of Labor, a few — like the Moses Lake center — are administered by the U.S. Forest Service.

While the program has faced tough times in the past few years — threats to downsize and close Forest Service centers, lockdowns and restrictions in response to COVID-19 — Spell said the public graduation signals a desire to reinvigorate and renew the program. Currently, the Moses Lake center has 119 students but is allotted a maximum of 236 students under current federal regulations.

“We are actually in the process of building up the numbers,” he said. “We anticipate receiving at least 80 next month, and our goal is to get up to 84% of our contracted on-board strength, or 198.”

Spell, who started out as academic manager at Columbia Basin Job Corps three years ago and became the center’s director in January 2022, said the Columbia Basin center has programs in the construction trades, culinary arts, business administration, facilities maintenance, nursing, pharmacy tech and computer networking.

The goal of Job Corps, however, is not just providing education and work skills, but also helping young people — many of whom come from very difficult backgrounds — learn how to cooperate, work in teams, set goals and succeed in life.

“Once they realize that staff was really engaged and invested in them, they start feeling comfortable enough to realize their goals and potential,” he said.

For a lot of students, neither the Job Corps program nor the lives they had before coming to the center were easy, as graduate and speaker Padilla, who completed the office administration and is on his way to Los Angeles for advanced training in the transportation industry, told attendees.

“I came here for a lot of the same reasons you guys did. Our education was not compatible with our home life. We strive for more. We knew that the life we had wasn’t the life we wanted,” Padilla said. “Life on this campus is hard and it sucks. But we took a chance on the center and I hope the center gives you guys the same things.”

Even as difficult as his Job Corps experience was, Padilla said it taught him that perseverance taught him how to make his way in life even when little goes well or as planned.

“Keep yourself adaptable. The staff are here to help and they want to see every single one of you guys succeed,” he said. “Time flies by so fast you’ll be out of here in no time.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.