Tailor-Made Workforce Training
Published Apr 16, 2007
Red Rocks Community College networks with business leaders.
Jefferson County community college administrators make a point of networking with industry leaders to stay abreast of workforce needs and adjust their programs accordingly.
Red Rocks Community College, for example, has developed programs in response to industry requests. “They come to us and tell us they have a need,” RRCC President Cliff Richardson says. “Our radiologic technology program was developed in response to Lutheran Medical Center coming to us with a need.”
The college also developed a process-technology curriculum following industry inquiries.
The two-year program trains workers who can troubleshoot and maintain plant equipment, analyze data, and attend to safety and quality control in an industrial environment. These multiskilled workers are in demand by corporations that include BP America and Coors Brewing.
Richardson extends a hand to the community by serving on economic councils and other organizations outside the college, and by inviting industry and business leaders to serve on advisory boards at the college. This interchange helps keep the two worlds connected.
Bert Glandon, president of Arapahoe Community College, works with business leaders to understand the workforce needs of emerging industries such as nanotechnology and geospacial technology. “You have to keep your ear to the ground and talk to people,” Glandon says.
Institutions such as Red Rocks, Arapahoe and Front Range community colleges will have to be nimble in the future. So will the workforce. “Forty percent of new jobs by 2015 haven’t been invented yet,” Glandon says, noting that today’s high school students need to be prepared to change careers – not just jobs – multiple times.
Story by Sue Lenthe
Photo by Stephen Cherry
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