Technical Training Gets A Boost In Lawrence
Thanks To Two-County Education Partnership
While some people pine for love and others yearn for just a good vacation, Lawrence business and industry leaders for years have sought something more practical: technical training for their employees. Last week, their wait ended.
A dozen business managers and employers from throughout the Douglas County area gathered last Thursday at the Weststar Energy facility to learn how to improve their skills in the workplace. The class, administered by Johnson County Community College, focused on a wide range of practical topics, from dealing with discrimination to communicating more effectively.
Symbolically the class represented more than a small gathering. Local business leaders and others hope it will ignite a movement to increase on-the-job training in the Lawrence area, helping employees become smarter, more skilled and more savvy on a variety of issues facing today’s workforce.
Education leaders at KU have high hopes for the partnership that recently kicked off between Douglas and Johnson counties. The alliance named the JCCC as the leading provider of technical programs to Douglas County.
“We’re so pleased to see these technical classes being offered in the Lawrence area,” said Fred Pawlicki, Executive Director of Continuing Education at KU.
KU officials say that the more training they do that’s current and comprehensive, the better equipped the employees in the area will be to succeed in today’s challenging work environment.”
The push to get a more comprehensive technical program to Douglas County began in 2004 after the KU Institute for Policy and Social Research released a study that said Douglas County workers did not have the technical training required to meet the needs of area employers.
The report called for improved collaboration among the business community, schools and students to achieve a common goal: to bring more technical programs to Lawrence.
In previous years, technical classes have been offered sporadically throughout Douglas County, most often at at high schools and at the Weststar Energy facility, located on 27th Street. However, the KU Institute study said many students have been prevented from participating in these classes. Reasons cited included the distance between schools, coordination of school schedules, transportation issues, and lack of awareness.
Employers are hailing the new technical classes as a big step in the right direction.
“You’ve got to like the fact the classes are so convenient. They can held early in the morning or during the lunch hour, so they can really work well into employees’ schedules,” said Dave Loch, North American team product leader for Sauer Danfoss, the worldwide equipment manufacturer based in Lawrence.
Last week’s“Workplace Skills” class is the first of many technical classes that JCCC will offer in Douglas County. Course instructor Tracy Bedell likes the way KU is taking the best instruction out of Johnson County and bringing it to Lawrence.
“The skills class will prove to be valuable regardless of your standing within a company,” she said. “With this training, I know I’ve given participants the tools to go back and use, whether they’re a supervisor or a business owner or they’re looking for their first job.”.
Additional classes are expected to begin at the end of the year. Topics of future classes will be driven by specific requests from businesses that need the training, JCCC officials say.
“We’re still trying to determine what direction we should go. That’s why the feedback we receive from participating local businesses will be crucial,” said Loralee Stevens, JCCC’s coordinator of community outreach.
Based on existing JCCC technical classes, a wide variety of course offerings could be coming to Lawrence. JCCC has more 50 different career and technical programs each with highly specialized concentrations. JCCC’s expansive course catalog ranges from classes on computer training and accounting basics to healing customer relationships and developing a mentor program.
“The likelihood of us being able to provide our entire career and technology offerings off campus is not feasible with specialized equipment that can’t be duplicated,” said Stevens. “But we are looking at what portions of programs we can duplicate in Lawrence.”
JCCC’s presence in Lawrence provides a much needed break for companies like Sauer-Danfoss, which makes hydraulic pumps and motors for farm equipment and construction vehicles. They are used to having to send employees to different counties for training.
“If someone is hired and they don’t have the technical skills needed and the company is willing to train them, the problem has been, there is no where to train,” Loch said.
Other business leaders like Loch would like to see a permanent location for technical training in Lawrence rather than the temporary facility at Westar , but for now, they’re happy with the new JCCC arrangement.
Lack of technical training has been a problem in Douglas County for years.
According to industry leaders, the problem is that Douglas County is one of the few counties statewide without a technical or community college of some sort. One reason, ironically, may be the sheer presence of the University of Kansas.
“Even though Lawrence is growing and there are opportunities in terms of business, we are very limited because there is no community college,” said Bruce Passman, Deputy Superintendent of Lawrence Schools. He explains that each community college in Kansas is assigned a service area. However, counties with state universities, such as Douglas County, are excluded from that service area.
Moreover, Douglas County remains one of the only counties in Kansas that’s populated by a state university but whose university represents a single source for higher-education funding. Manhattan, Kansas, by comparison, does not have a community college but does play host to the Manhattan Area Technical College.
Speculation surrounds the reasoning behind this long-standing absence of technical training programs in Lawrence. Some even call it a monopoly. “KU just doesn’t seem to be interested in technical training,” Loch said.
Permission has to be granted by KU officials each time a school wants to teach a technical training class in the Lawrence area. The same goes for any college or university. Permission must be granted from that school so that programs aren’t duplicated.
While most of time this procedure is just common courtesy between schools, some industry insiders attribute the lack of other educational programs in Lawrence to the dominating presence of KU.
KU officials make no reference to that claim.
“The bottom line is that KU doesn’t offer these programs but we’re now bringing in the best providers,” Pawlicki said.
Whatever the real reasons why Douglas County has lacked technical skills programs in the past, educators and employers alike agree the future for such training looks bright indeed.
“I think it’s the start of a wonderful partnership between KU and JCCC,” Pawlicki said.. At long last we can both provide our different areas of expertise and provide the kind of industry-leading, expert training that the Douglas County workplace expects and deserves.”