Community colleges and local businesses have teamed up to ensure there's a pool of candidates for available jobs.
By BENITA D. NEWTON
Published October 13, 2003
NEW PORT RICHEY - The nursing shortage that began a few years ago created a revolving door at local hospitals with the same pool of nurses being recycled through different health care facilities.
"It was scary," said Robin Lapham, director of patient services at Morton Plant North Bay Hospital in New Port Richey. "There were very few experienced nurses coming through our doors applying for jobs, and it took a lot longer to fill vacancies."
Then Lapham's hospital and several others in the area turned to Pasco-Hernando Community College for help. The groups partnered with the college and provided grants for new instructors, clinical facilities and student incentives. In return for free tuition, books and uniforms, the students contract to work for the hospitals upon graduation. With a $20,000 price tag attached to filling just one vacant registered nurse position, Lapham considers the thousands of dollars they funnel into PHCC each semester a solid investment.
"This will more than pay for itself when the first true class comes out in October 2004," Lapham said. "We get very high quality graduates from PHCC."
In recent years, crowded classrooms and stretched budgets have compelled Tampa Bay's community colleges to cultivate relationships with business leaders and professionals who provide financial and technical assistance and offer advice on staffing needs.
Personnel shortages in several fields, a need for internal staff development and growing immigrant populations have made it more important for the community colleges to adapt courses to meet the business challenges in the areas that surround them.
"The community college is the lifeblood of the community," said Paul Szuch, vice president of educational services at PHCC. "We're the first line of defense."
Faculty members meet regularly with advisory committees composed of business professionals. The groups share industry concerns and focus on the real life skills and emerging technologies that should be worked into the curriculums.
"We try to make sure we have our antenna out to get the pulse of the community," said Sylvia Carley, vice president of education and student development at Hillsborough Community College.
Managers from auto body shops and car dealerships told HCC officials they were concerned that their trained workers were aging and that too few young people were entering the field. The school designed a program and the local auto repair professionals offered tuition, mentors, facilities and internships. Now the 18-month auto collision repair program has delivered nearly 30 professionals into the industry, four of whom started businesses. With a 90 percent placement rate, the program has 15 students waiting to get in.
"The shortage of qualified technicians was driving the cost of labor up and having a negative impact on the ability of a company to make a profit and keep a high standard of quality for the customer," said Dan McNeel, body shop manager at Bill Currie Ford in Tampa, who employs two graduates in his division. "It's early to really see a dramatic impact from the program, but we'll definitely see it in the next three or four years."
The preexisting relationships mean smoother transitions for the new graduates when they enter the professional world.
"Because they do their clinical rotation in our hospital, when they graduate, they already know our facility inside and out," said Gwen Alonso, nurse recruiter at Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point in Hudson, who said the hospital spends $7,000 for each graduate they sponsor.
These same sort of partnerships will mean 300 more nursing students at St. Petersburg College by January and a bit of relief for PHCC, whose registered and practical nursing degree programs will still be full until fall 2005. The school of education and the new dental hygiene program at SPC also grew out of shortages in those fields.
PHCC tries to provide training only for high-wage, high-skill fields, said Gayle Brooks, dean of work force programs.
"We don't want them to come out and make minimum wage," Brooks said. "They can do that without us."
To meet those standards, PHCC recently eliminated several programs, including hospitality management, EKG technology and building construction technology. Such programs either do not offer enough high-paying jobs in the bay area or require so much on-job training that a degree doesn't provide an edge.
"Our budget is so tight, we must delete one every time we add a class," Brooks said.
Bad economic times also have helped community colleges pick up more revenue through corporate training courses. Internal professional development classes were among the first cuts from company budgets when the economy went south, so many colleges have been able to swoop in and provide those services to local businesses, said Anne Arto, coordinator of professional development and corporate training at PHCC.
"Companies that cut back on training can now see for themselves what a negative impact it's had on them," Arto said. "There's nothing like not having something to miss it."
With looser restraints, the colleges can design training around just about any subject. Online course enrollment also has grown as companies realize it's an economical way to train individuals right at their workstations.
"Five years ago, employers didn't want any part of that," said Carol Copenhaver, senior vice president for Educational and Student Services at St. Petersburg College. "Now, they're pushing to get online training done."
Doing corporate training through a local community college can save companies time and money, especially since most will send instructors to the workplace. At Forensic Technology in Largo, employees recently had the opportunity to spend four hours a week at work learning Spanish with an instructor from SPC, field operations manager Philip Snell said. In addition, the college was able to build an onsite electronics course especially for Forensic Technology's needs.
Fred Holbert, training officer for the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority in Clearwater, said he saves an average of $100 per student by sending employees to SPC for computer software courses, rather than Tampa or Orlando training sites, which are pricier and require travel. Plus the flexibility of breaking eight-hour courses in smaller portions keeps employees from losing an entire day of work.
"If their instructors are unavailable, they go out and find instructors trained specifically in what we need," Holbert said. "It really is a great community asset."
Corporate training has been especially useful for manufacturing companies that are looking for quality management tools that have recently become popular.
"Requests have racheted up several notches," Copenhaver said. "They're not coming to us just wanting Microsoft Word training. They want higher end stuff that captures the big picture."
The community colleges also serve as prime resources for the booming immigrant population in the bay area. HCC has several programs designed to help non-English speakers assimilate into the workforce.
"There are many Hispanic and Asians in our area who have skills in their own language, but need to learn English to become marketable," HCC's Carley said.
SPC has a corporate version of its ESL program that companies can offer to their employees.
"When Flextronics went out of business in Tarpon Springs, we did ESL training for the entire company," Copenhaver said. "That's very important in the manufacturing arena because it has a lot of non-English speakers."
