CCRI training to meet needs of employers

SUPPORTING ROLE: Roxanne Nadeau, left, works on a painting at Access Point Rhode Island with direct-support professional Karen Matteson. Through CCRI, APRI has offered two different, for-credit courses in a professional training program. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
SUPPORTING ROLE: Roxanne Nadeau, left, works on a painting at Access Point Rhode Island with direct-support professional Karen Matteson. Through CCRI, APRI has offered two different, for-credit courses in a professional training program. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

Since the 1980s, the Community College of Rhode Island has been contracting with employers to offer for-credit and noncredit classes that train students in manufacturing and other sectors, with health care a growing focus.
Christine Jett, 34, of Cranston, is a medical assistant in pediatric hematology and oncology at the Tomorrow Fund Clinic at Hasbro Children’s Hospital who is now pursuing an associate nursing degree at CCRI. She says she couldn’t have gotten to this point without taking nine prerequisite classes over the past three years in everything from math to anatomy through a program developed by the nonprofit Stepping Up and CCRI.
This single mother of three completed some of the programming while pregnant with her third daughter. Several of the evening classes were on-site at Rhode Island Hospital, she said, enabling her to attend right after work.
“I want to be a role model and provide a better life, and Stepping Up has afforded me the opportunity to do that for my family,” Jett said. “I highly recommend [it] for anyone able to do it.”
The division of CCRI known as the Center for Workforce and Community Education serves about 20,000 students annually in everything from career training for pharmacy technicians and massage therapists to driver’s education and motorcycle training, said Tasha Gillette, the center’s director of workforce training.
Of that total, about 1,500 are in workforce development, and of those, up to 600 participate in contracted training with employers, Gillette said. A new veterinary associate training program debuts in March.
“Anytime a company has a need for training, we can either customize something noncredit for them, or we can take any credit courses offered in our catalogue and send our faculty out and train on-site,” said Gillette.
The majority of courses contracted with businesses, like the ones Jett took, are credit bearing, adds Robin Smith, the center’s associate vice president.
“[The courses] reflect what businesses want,” Smith said. “It’s a trend we’ve seen. Employers are looking to improve the educational attainment of their employees so they [can] move up within the company.” In the most recent full academic year, 2013-14, CCRI offered 70 contracts to outside organizations for both credit and noncredit courses, Gillette said. Halfway through the current 2014-15 academic year, 35 contracts “are in the works, but this number will increase as we develop courses and contracts on an as-needed basis for companies,” she said.
CCRI doesn’t don’t track job placements, Gillette added, but does hear from students and employers often. Students have been hired by South County Hospital, the VA Hospital, and at multiple locations at Rite Aid, Walmart Pharmacies and Walgreens, she said.
Stepping Up, based in Providence, is a partnership between the UNAP/Rhode Island Hospital Education Fund and Women & Infants Hospital, other Rhode Island-based hospitals and health care providers, education providers, labor unions and funders. Since the spring of 2009, the agency has been working with CCRI and several partners to offer training leading to health careers, said Sandra Olivo Peterson, interim executive director.
“The goal of Stepping Up is to provide workers and residents with the tools and supports they need to create or advance a health care career while at the same time meeting employer workforce-shortage needs,” said Peterson.
With a goal of an 80 percent completion rate for all prerequisite course work, 99 percent of the 353 students who undertook studies did complete the work for data recorded as of September 2014, Peterson said. The vast majority of those students are Rhode Island Hospital and Women & Infants Hospital employees, she said.
The value of these programs for students and employers alike is convenience, with on-site classes at the two hospitals, as well as career advising directly through managers to discuss work schedules and performance, Peterson said. “Employers should reach out to institutions and say, ‘Hey, I need this type of training,’ ” Peterson added. “Workforce needs right now are changing. Individuals finding themselves unemployed or youth graduating from high school may not think health care is a job they can pursue. Those are the people that need to be trained.”
Most of the contract training, including Stepping Up, is billed directly to the participating organizations, Gillette noted. Stepping Up’s classes are paid for by Lifespan and Care New England Health System, which split the cost evenly, she said.
Another successful contractual arrangement CCRI has established is through Access Point Rhode Island in Cranston, one of three businesses that are part of the North Kingstown-based Keystone Group, a trio of human services agencies that support people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, said Daniel Moriarty, director for education, training and community outreach at APRI. Before he came to APRI at the end of 2013, Moriarty had cultivated the same arrangement with CCRI through the Trudeau Center in Warwick, a similar type of agency, he said.
“CCRI is a place that is very creative and willing to work with businesses and industries to meet their needs, so we saw the value in developing these training programs to professionalize the work we do,” Moriarty said.
In 2013-14 and again this year, through CCRI, several partner agencies, including Trudeau and APRI, have offered two different, for-credit courses in a Direct Support Professional Training program. It typically leads to an 18-credit certificate in developmental disabilities or an associate degree in human services, Moriarty said.
The different partners, along with APRI as the lead, served as host sites for the internship component of the course work. Cost for the programming in this case was covered by an Innovative Partnership grant through the Governor’s Workforce Board. The target group for this program are people who are under- or unemployed, interested in the field, those with disabilities and veterans, he said. “Many of the folks are already employed, but it’s also a way of recruiting into the field,” Moriarty said.
In 2013-14, when Moriarty worked for both Trudeau and APRI, he observed 79 of the 90 students who started training across all the different agencies complete training programs. More than half got jobs as a result, he said. This academic year so far, 31 of 35 students who started training have completed it, he said.
“Many of them really enjoyed the learning, they learned new and different things,” he said. “They felt the training prepared them to truly do the work. The nice [part] of this training program is it is [designed] roughly around 15-18 different instructors for these two courses. They’re learning from a lot of different people really experienced doing this work.”
Leo Deloria, 57, of Woonsocket, an unemployed veteran who had been a truck driver, found out about the program through a job fair but was nervous about going back to school. Now, with the training completed in October, he is supervising a roomful of developmentally disabled people for APRI.
The training program “meant a lot,” he said. “Before that I was a mess, but I started another step in my life and this was part of it. I’m I glad I did it. My whole life I was always working by myself. The big challenge was working with people again. I’ve got a direction now, a new career, a new life.”
Rory Carmody, CCRI adjunct faculty and director of program development at APRI, has hired 12-16 people through the program over the past year, including Deloria.
“Based on what I saw I really wanted him as an employee,” she said. “He wanted to learn about the work. He had a nice style, was a hard worker and came with a lot of business-related skills. For me, it’s a godsend because it means I have an individual I’ve seen in the classroom and in the internship. I have a good sense of the person’s ability and it makes the hiring process that much easier.” •

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