OTTUMWA — The Ottumwa Job Corps was the country’s finest two years ago, and then COVID-19 happened.
It remains the nation’s finest.
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For the second time in three years, the Job Corps was ranked No. 1 for its training and placement of individuals into jobs in various career paths, whether it be military, skilled trades or other areas. The Job Corps was scored in 12 different criteria by the U.S. Department of Labor, and emerged the best among 118 centers in the nation.
“Achieving that top spot is a huge accomplishment for our center, and we attribute that to the hard work and dedication of our staff and continuing to be innovative,” center director Taren Ferguson said. “But our students remain focused and dedicated to reaching their goals.”
The Job Corps has what Ferguson calls “on-center” and “post-center.” When students are on-center, they work toward training and completing what they started, such as earning a diploma. Post-center is measured by placement in various endeavors and wage earnings.
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“The whole goal is for them to become taxpaying citizens and join the workforce,” she said. “Not only did we have about an 80% placement rate of our students, the average wage placement was about 14% from the prior year.
“They wages earned through their first six months of employment increased about 25% through the prior year,” she said. “That is huge, and those numbers alone just really helped us skyrocket to the top.”
Ferguson said the relationships with businesses and colleges remain strong and are key to the Job Corps’ success. Many businesses, particularly locally, actively seek potential employees in the skilled trades and industrial sectors, and those represent a bulk of the offerings through the Job Corps.
Students can stay with the Job Corps program up to two years, but the average stay is about nine or 10 months, Ferguson said. The Ottumwa center is essentially a mini-campus near the Ottumwa Regional Airport, complete with dormitories, a cafeteria, a recreation area, etc. The center is for students ages 16 to 24, and they need to meet federal poverty guidelines among other criteria. Most students are around 19, Ferguson said.
Ferguson said students are guided to the Job Corps largely through school counselors, relatives and social media. The center typically has 237 students, but it also sponsors students at Indian Hills Community College.
“If a student has an unstable home life, or they need additional structure and support, our admissions counselors go into schools and seek out students wanting that technical path, but also additional support,” Ferguson said. “The industries we serve at our center are for those most in need, especially in southeast Iowa. We serve the information technology sector, construction, health care and material handling and transportation.
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“The reason we’re here is to supply a pipeline of workers to our local workforce and the workforce in the lower quadrant of the state,” she said. “This last year we had a lot of placements in Des Moines, Quad Cities.”
The pandemic, especially in the last year, forced to Job Corps to assess what it can do differently.
“Trying to keep up with demand has been a large change,” Fergusons said. “I think a big change for us has been with the virtual learning, ensuring our students are up to speed technologically, because that’s changing the workforce and employers’ needs. They need folks who are technologically sound. That’s going to be a major impact player in all industries.”
Ferguson would like nothing more than to remain the best, but it doesn’t come easily. Even more adjustments will have to be made.
“We don’t want to remain complacent in any area,” she said. “So it’s cultivating that innovative mindset and constantly searching for what’s new. Industries are constantly changing, and we have to change with them so that our training is not obsolete.
“We have to stay ahead of the game.”
Source: https://t-tees.com
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