This article is
listed with permission from the Spartanburg Herald-Journal
as written by Gary Glancy, staff writer, and printed on
October 26, 2009.
SCC's Union branch hones skills for
in-demand jobs.
Spartanburg
Community College will soon open its new QuickJobs
Development Center in Union, which school and local
officials are hoping will eventually curb an unemployment
rate of 20 percent there.
The recently completed 14,000 square-foot
facility on Highway 176 -- an estimated $2.3 million project
funded by a grant from the Department of Commerce and a
Community Development Block Grant -- will house three
technical programs: welding, pipe fitting and Manufacturing
Skill Standards Council certification. Classes are
scheduled to begin by mid-November with the programs going
into full swing in January, 2010.
Dr. Just stands in the welding lab
pictured on the right. Officials say welding is a
high-demand field.
Most of the students are recipients of
scholarship money from an "individual training account"
through Upstate Career Source, which operates under the
direction of the Upstate Workforce Investment Board.
Career Source received $2.7 million from the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act to provide grants for a
training program that would help unemployed or underemployed
workers from Cherokee, Spartanburg and Union counties
upgrade their skills in areas of actual or anticipated high
demand in the Upstate, said Debra Giordano, project director
for Career Source.
Spartanburg Community College is one of
several locally approved training providers in the program,
through Career Source's
QuickJobs partnership with the South Carolina Technical
and Community College System.
Opportunity next door
David Just, SCC's vice president for
corporate and community education, said companies such as
the Union center's new neighbor, LSP Automotive Systems, are
looking for a local pipeline to help fill jobs at their
plants, "so it's a win-win for everybody."
Just said the Manufacturing Skill
Standards Council program, developed and endorsed by the
National Association of Manufacturers, gives trainees
national certification they can take to prospective
employers.
"This gives entry-level workers some type
of credentials," Just said, "so if they went to a company
with that credential, the company would at least have the
knowledge of what that person's competency level would be."
Spartanburg Community College has a
similar program at its Tyger River campus in Duncan, and
Just said many of those students could find employment upon
graduation through BMW's full-time employee supplier, Tier
One Solutions.
With BMW's impending expansion in the
Upstate, "all these suppliers are going to need about 600
new jobs," Just said, "and these aren't temp jobs — these
are jobs that are with these companies, and you are on the
payroll of that company and not a temp agency."
Just said classes at the Union facility
will start out as a 12-week program, but the college will
have the ability to accelerate it into eight weeks if need
be.
"The companies have given us a schedule
of when they need to start hiring people, so we're kind of
planning our classes so that we can have job fairs at the
end of each program," he said.
USC-Union on board
Spartanburg Community College also will
share the Union facility in a partnership with the
University of South Carolina-Union, which will offer general
education courses in the building for students to take as
they fulfill transferable academic requirements while taking
SCC's technical courses.
Joe Richards, interim department head of
SCC's welding program at the central campus in Spartanburg,
said the center will be a big help for people in Union.
"That's how I got started," he said. "I
(graduated SCC) in 1977 and went to Catawba Nuclear
(Station, near Rock Hill). That was the first job I ever had
as a welder, and I've been welding for 33 years."
Richards' program is not only maxed out —
with all 48 of his welding booths filled for both the day
and evening sessions — but there's a waiting list.
Richards said he's got six recent
graduates lined up to go to work at Duke Energy's Cliffside
plant.
Just, who called welding a "hot area to
get into," said as the Cliffside construction site peaks, it
will employ up to 2,000 workers.