Schools

Local College Helps Retrain Displaced Workers

If you've recently been laid off or graduated from high school, Chattahoochee Tech wants to help you get to work.

A prominent technical college with a campus in Acworth is gearing up for its first Fall on the semester system and is inviting interested persons to learn a new trade during these tough economic times.

Rachael Day, Coordinator of Career Services at , said she usually sees students during two phases of their academic career. Phase one is “What do I want to be when I grow up?” Day assists students by providing them with salary information, potential barriers to employment, and works with instructors to help the student learn as much as possible.

Near the end of the student's studies, Day sees them again in the “I need help finding a job” phase. Day helps write and critiques students' resumes, and once approved, students post their resumes on a Chattahoochee Tech job board, where over 2,300 potential employers will seek them out. Day also performs many interview training sessions and mini-seminars during this phase. This is essential to helping students, many of whom are displaced workers, get jobs.

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“A lot of my students are former construction workers,” said Mike Smith, instructor of the Heavy Diesel Mechanics class. The course, one of many taught at the school, teaches students how to repair every major system of a Class A truck, from the steering and suspension systems to complex computers that now control every facet of the trucks' operations.

John Appleby, an Acworth man in Smith's class, is re-training as a diesel mechanic after forty years of house painting. After the housing and construction industries bottomed out during the recession, Appleby discovered his skills were no longer in demand.

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“I refused to be a Wal-Mart greeter and I didn't want to move to Florida and play shuffleboard, so I decided to re-train,” he said. During meetings with his career counselor at the school, he was torn between a career as a diesel mechanic or as a biomedical engineer. He chose to be a diesel mechanic, although both professions are seeing a high number of new hires.

As an older worker, Appleby is often teased by his younger classmates, who ask him what the inside of Noah's Ark smelled like or if he threw his back out putting the last stone on the Great Pyramid. Although he takes this ribbing in stride, Appleby was afraid of age discrimination once he re-entered the workforce. He learned that diesel mechanics are in great demand, and that competency should supersede age when shops are looking to take on new workers.

“There are more trucks than people who know how to work on them,” he said.

Smith, his instructor, said that in a recent National Automobile Dealers Association study, there was a shortage of around 60,000 skilled diesel mechanics in the country, and that there will be a turnover of 30,000 mechanics a year for the next decade. Much of this turnover will come from retiring Baby Boomers, like Smith. Six of Smith's students, who are still learning their trade in his classes, have already been hired by local shops in desperate need of new mechanics.

“I expect my students will become in-house trainers in their new workplaces,” Smith said. The diesel mechanic program Smith teaches in is the only such program north of Atlanta in the state.

The shop itself is located at the far end of the Industrial Building. On entering the building, the smell of diesel fuel permeates the halls. Once at the garage, one notices that there is no climate control, and that there are a number of truck cabs in various states of repair for the students. The trucks, made in different years, offer various levels of mechanical complexity; one made in 1996 has windows controlled by an air-powered motor, while a similar truck made in 2001 has a computer-controlled electric relay to operate the same window. More recent trucks no longer have manually operated clutches or transmissions: a computer handles the delicate shifting.

“You have to have an analytical mind to do this job today,” Smith said.

In another classroom, John Stump, an industrial systems technician, is in a workshop with his students. Almost all of the equipment is surplus from the Anheuser-Busch Brewery, where Stump worked for decades. Today, Stump's students are learning to calibrate pressure transmitters, but they started by learning how to read wiring schematics and how to handle a wiring station. Eventually, his students will move on to more complex systems such as variable-speed drives and operating and maintaining a conveyor belt system.

One of Stump's students, Neill Dempsey of Cartersville, is learning how to become an industrial electrician after spending years in the restaurant management field. Dempsey wanted to learn a trade and work in a specialized field, such as a railroad technician or a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) troubleshooter.

“There are many areas you can go with this education,” Dempsey said. “There are at least five to 10 different fields.”

Dempsey shouldn't have a lot of trouble finding work once he graduates. The job outlook for industrial technicians has increased in the last six to 12 months, mainly because of the retirement of industrial technicians who were hired decades ago when businesses began to expand. According to Dempsey, it all boils down to mentality.

“If you've just been laid off, you can sit around and mope or you can do something about it,” he said.

Another instructor who is making a difference in the classroom and in the field is biomedical engineer Dr. Mike O'Rear. O'Rear, who also serves in the Georgia State Defense Force, has been teaching at Chattahoochee Tech since 1986. With his right arm freshly bandaged from donating blood, O'Rear explained some of what he teaches.

“Our number one job is patient safety,” he said. The field, in which he has been working for 43 years, took off in the early 1970s, when consumer advocate Ralph Nader discovered that many hospital machines were unintentionally leaking electric current, which was injuring patients.

O'Rear's students learn how to maintain and repair complex medical machines such as dialysis machines, electrosurgical units and machines that monitor a patients' vital signs. Although there is minimal patient contact, a biomedical engineer helps keep patients safe just like doctors do.

Dr. O'Rear's long tenure at the school has earned him the respect of his current and former students. Vilasoane Padtha, who is a former and current student, returned to Chattahoochee Tech after being fired from Bell South after a 10 year stint as an electrical technician.

“I don't usually ask him electrical questions without reading the manuals first,” he said, “but I do ask him a lot of questions about life. I trust him.”

Starting Aug. 22, the eight campuses of Chattahoochee Tech will be moving from the 10-week quarter to the 15-week semester. The school is accepting new students for their first-ever semester. The registration deadline is July 29.


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