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January 22, 2004
Extra
funds to assist in job training
Nick Martin
Mesa Legend
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Dennis Mikulich
Mesa Legend
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| President Bush congratulates student
Stacey Leedom who returned to school to gain additional training
and education for a better career. |
Many on campus described President Bush’s visit to
Mesa Community College on Wednesday as “once in a lifetime.”
The effects of his visit, however, will last longer.
Tuesday night, President Bush received possibly one of the loudest standing
ovations of the night from both parties as he proposed to Congress during
the State of the Union speech to increase support for community colleges.
now, after six months working as a network administrator after her second
education in the Business and Industry Institute, as it was at the end
of her 15 year graphic arts career.
Bill Moses had worked 28 years for a semi-conductor company before it
shut its doors. He said the classes he took through MCC’s Business
and Industry Institute helped him fill the gaps of his resume. He now
has a new job working for McKesson Corp., a pharmaceutical industry corporation
that is involved with supply, information and care management.
Robert Chapman is married, the father of two boys, who formerly worked
in the semi-conductor industry. He will get his degree in the Business
and Industry Institute this spring and hopes to be finding a job quickly
thereafter. He called the turnaround in his life through the Business
and Industry Institute as “a disaster turned opportunity.”
NOT BUSINESS AS USUAL
The program the president spotlighted on his visit to MCC was developed
by the Computer Technology Industry Association, known as CompTIA. CompTIA
is a trade organization for information technology.
According to the organization’s vice president of workforce development
and training, Neill Hopkins, the organization received money from the
US Department of Labor to develop solutions for the problem of information
technology students and workers graduating from college without the skills
that companies want and need. This has created trained, educated people
who can’t get jobs, Hopkins said.
CompTIA’s solution: Appren-ticeships.
The organization came up with a plan for industries, whether they are
service oriented — such as fast food — or educational —
such as community colleges — to train their high-tech workers by
getting them into the businesses in a hands-on way, placing them in apprenticeship
programs with real employers and real companies. Essentially, students
and workers get job experience before they ever send out their resumes.
CompTIA has named this program NITAS, the National Information Technology
Appren-ticeship System.
NITAS brings what companies need directly to the community colleges, Hopkins
said. Colleges such as MCC have already been working hand-in-hand with
companies to give students the specific skills that major IT companies
are looking for.
Pilot programs testing NITAS, Hopkins said, found a 100 percent success
rate. Workers or students completing the program sometimes increased their
company’s productivity growth by 12 percent, he said. Those percentages
on million-dollar levels equates to real money, Hopkins said.
ELSEWHERE
President Bush also visited a community college in Toledo, Ohio earlier
on Wednesday. Owens Community College, which according to its website
teaches 40,000 students, hosted roughly the same event as MCC. Some details
for their event differed greatly from MCC’s, however.
Melissa Kimbler, adviser for the Owens student newspaper, the Owens Outlook,
said the last few days at their college had been a whirlwind. Kimbler
unofficially knew last Thursday that the president was coming to their
campus, she said, but didn’t officially find out until Tuesday,
the day before the president was set to arrive.
From the account Kimbler had given of the last few days at Owens, the
main difference between the two colleges appeared to be class schedule.
Kimbler said no classes at Owens had been cancelled as opposed to MCC’s
closing of at least three buildings for part of Wednesday which included
canceling or moving an unknown number of classes.
Kimbler did not think her campus’ decision to run on schedule was
the best idea, however.
“I think we had more of the chaos because they kept classes open,”
she said. Owens had their regular amount of students on campus, Kimbler
said, plus about 300 members of the press and 300 guests for their campus
event.
Kimbler also said, like MCC, Owens had one parking lot closed for the
president’s visit, causing huge parking headaches. She also said
shuttle service that buses students between the college’s two seperate
campuses was stopped for some time, creating even more traffic woes.
The Owens’ presidential visit had, like MCC’s, focused on
workforce development. Kimbler said the college’s Integrated Systems
and Technology program had drawn the White House to Ohio. She also mentioned
that Owens has a strong state-of-the-art Homeland Security training center
one of its academic departments. The program, though one of the school’s
prouder programs, wasn’t the reason Bush came, Kimbler said.
“It really wasn’t highlighted,” she said, “but
it couldn’t have hurt.”
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