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Maggie Harris
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Maggie Harris
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photo provided by Portage Lakes Career Center
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photo provided by Portage Lakes Career Center
After graduating from Jackson High School, Tristan Sanderson took some time off because he didn’t think traditional classroom learning and lectures at a four-year university were for him. He looked to people he knew, who are welders, for career inspiration. They are successful, and he found it fascinating how they make something new out of raw materials.
“It’s interesting hard work. It’s not just sitting at a desk,” he says. “I needed something a little more hands-on that required a little more critical thinking.”
At age 20, he enrolled in the 10-month welding program at Portage Lakes Career Center in Green. Lisa Tripney, assistant superintendent at the career center, says opting to pursue career technical education has substantial benefits for those in myriad life stages from just graduating high school to changing a career midlife.
“If you are not sure that college is right for you … come give us a try,” she says. “Within a year, we can give you a certificate, a license. You can learn an enormous amount. You will have a solid skill that you can take with you. You will not be in a massive amount of debt.”
Tripney, Sanderson and Laurie Norval, school
director of Akron CNC Training Center in Akron, share insights on why students should consider a career technical school and what to expect.
In Demand
A trade can be overlooked as a career path, but the need is great. For example, there is a high demand for CNC machinists now, and the area is rich with opportunities. When tire factories were prevalent in Akron, many machining companies set up operations in Northeast Ohio, Norval says.
“Within an hour of Akron — north, south, east and west in our circumference — there’s 1,100 machining companies,” Norval says. “Additionally, the average machinist is 50 and above, so they keep retiring. There’s way more jobs than people qualified to do the job.”
The training center works to help close that gap by training people to be machinists in a four-month program. Machinists make components and parts out of metal using a CNC mill or lathe. The school is located inside the OGS Industries manufacturing plant, where parts and components are made for the military, airline and automotive sectors. Companies utilize the CNC center to train employees because they can’t find experienced employees. Those who have a low income or are unemployed may qualify for free tuition through Ohio Means Jobs.
Portage Lakes Career Center also offers a CNC manufacturing technologies program, and it works to add programs to respond to needs for specific employees in the local job market. That’s why they added the emergency dispatcher program, which provides a safe place for students to learn if they can handle the stressful job.
Employers work with the career center too. The career center is one of 49 Ohio Technical Centers, and it’s also a Center for Training Excellence that offers contract training for employers. They use its facilities to help their employees get certifications like ServSafe for restaurant workers. And employer and industry advisory committees help keep each program up to date, so students can enter the job market equipped.
“[They] come in each year at least once and take a look at not only our curriculum,” Tripney says, “but they advise us as to what’s new, what’s trending, what’s leaving that particular industry so that the folks that we’ve pulled from the industry to teach maintain current industry standards.”
Career Ready
Students can leave career technical schools not just after completing a program but after earning certifications or licensures, which all programs at the career center offer. For example, for welding, Sanderson received two American Welding Society D1.1 structural welding code steel qualifications, one general welding certificate and an OSHA 10 certification. Other career center programs, which vary from part-time to full-time, include cosmetology, esthetician, nail technician, automotive service technician, HVAC, culinary and hospitality, EKG and phlebotomy, and practical nursing.
Health care students work in a nursing lab to practice patient interactions, and it has a new high-tech Anatomage table.
“It’s a huge table that allows you to look at what a human looks like inside,” Tripney says. “It is a lot of active learning. You’re not just listening to someone tell you what you’re going to do. You hear it, you learn the safety of it and then you go do it.”
Other learning environments that mirror the real world include a salon with areas for hair, nails and estheticians, a manufacturing lab with CNC lathes and mills, a kitchen and Neon Lime restaurant that has the same point-of-sale system as Green restaurants, an area with HVAC systems, a car garage, a welding lab and a dispatch area that uses the same CAD dispatch program as Summit County.
While the welding program utilizes a textbook, lectures and educational videos, Sanderson didn’t mind because they were all relevant to welding and bypassed the general education component that many degrees require. He enjoyed working in the welding lab, where students were taught skills and made projects like tiered trays. To make those, students worked in stations that included cutting metal, bending it, heating and twisting it and welding pieces of the trays together, which was Sanderson’s role.
“[It’s] going from zero knowledge of the trade,” he says, “to over the course of the year, being able to do stuff all on my own. … I learned stuff that is going to stick with me no matter where I go, what I do.”
At the CNC center, students take classes to learn blueprint reading, shop math, CNC computer programming, CAD, inspection and more. They utilize these skills during labs that use the school’s CNC mills and lathes in the OGS plant, where they learn how to operate and set up the machines. Tests include making metal projects.
“We don’t do term papers, book reports, library projects,” says Norval. “Everything that we teach is trade knowledge.”
Lasting Work
In today’s uncertain economy, many technical jobs offer a rarity: job security. Norval says that’s reason enough for locals to look into switching to CNC machining, which several have done after being laid off. Once a CNC machinist, they can advance to positions like CNC programmer, inspector or business owner.
“[They should consider] the high demand and long-term prospects for employment till they retire,” she says. “You could start at 30 and work for 35 years. It’s very secure.”
Not even three weeks after graduating from the career center, Sanderson got a job as a welder for Eleet Cryogenics in Bolivar, which provides new and used cryogenic bulk tanks and assemblies. He cuts old pipes and brackets off used tanks and welds on new brackets and caps before they’re re-piped. Sanderson is happy he found a job that engages him.
“For years, it’s been, You go to college and make a good life for yourself,” he says. “Blue collar, manual labor jobs, it’s a little more fulfilling to work a career like this because you’re doing something with your hands.”
Tripney says a career center can provide a fresh start as it did for an evening nail technician student and single mom who had to navigate life after a divorce. She completed the program and got employed doing what she wants with a schedule that works for her new life.
“Within a year, we have the opportunity to totally transform someone’s life,” Tripney says. “They are successful, are happy doing what they want to do, are going to a job that feels right for them.”
Akron CNC Training Center, 1169 Brittain Road, Akron, akroncnc.com; Portage Lakes Career Center, 4401 Shriver Road, Uniontown, plcc.edu
