Local schools provide training for sustaining jobs

By Jennifer Thomas

PLEASANT GAP — Kelsie Witmer, 17, and Cassie Homan, 18, were among the first students to sign on when the Central Pennsylvania Institute of Science and Technology began offering a dental assistance program this year.

It’s part of the growing medical field, one of the service-sector industries that is expected to be the biggest creators of jobs in Centre County in the coming years.

That’s one of the things that Homan likes about the possibility of working in the dental field. “There’s always a demand,” she said. “It pays well. The hours are really flexible.”

There are good jobs that pay a living wage in the service sector, which makes up the bulk of Centre County’s jobs, career counselors say. Along with medical services, growing industries in Centre County include education and professional, technical and hospitality services.

And job seekers need to be educated about what jobs will be available and what skills they’ll need to fill those jobs.

That’s what schools such as CPI and South Hills School of Business & Technology try to do: tailor their curricula to the industries that are likely to have local jobs for their graduates.

At CPI, programs serve high school students and adults seeking new career paths or retraining. About 500 high school students and 1,000 adults are enrolled in a mix of traditional and online courses.

“We have to look at what these jobs are going to be today and tomorrow,” CPI Executive Director Greg Michelone said.

Witmer and Homan, both Penns Valley seniors, will attend the Pennsylvania College of Technology next fall to pursue three-year associate degrees as dental hygienists. They saw the CPI training as a chance to jump-start their careers.

“It’s good to fall back on,” Witmer said.

A long list of employers lines the wall in Ellen Spinelli’s office at South Hills, where most programs offer two-year degrees with a heavy emphasis on the latest in business and technology.

The career services coordinator fields calls from just about every type of company seeking interns or people to fill open jobs, she said.

“There’s a lot going on in companies that people are not aware of,” Spinelli said.

Keeping up with employer demand is a challenge for those in the business of education, whose goal is to help students pick career paths they are passionate about and ones they can make a living at while staying in the Centre County area.

“Most of our folks want to stay in the area,” Spinelli said.

Top offerings these days at South Hills are the school’s medical programs, graphic design, accounting and a multi-faceted business management and marketing program.

At CPI, the state has targeted high-priority occupations in the fields of medicine, heavy construction and transportation, and culinary and hospitality services, directing more funding to training for these careers, Michelone said.

Practical nursing, certified nursing assistant, medical assistant and commercial drivers license programs are among the most popular retraining programs for adults, Michelone said.

Many of these positions offer good wages, though employees may have to start at entry-level positions and work their way into positions that offer higher wages.

“You can get in on the ground floor and still have a really practical background,” Michelone said. “I think there’s an awful lot of opportunities for kids and adults.”

For example, graduates of the new dental assistant program can expect jobs in the $25,000 to $30,000 range, Michelone said.

“For a one-year program, it’s really not a bad program,” he said.

Most graduates of the medical assistant program make between $9 and $15 an hour with benefits, said Lois Bergamaschi, CPI’s medical assistant program coordinator and instructor.

“It all depends on where you’re working,” she said.

The nine-month program is split between 65 percent clinical and 35 percent administrative and touches on just about all responsibilities students might have if working in a doctor’s office, from handling insurance issues to drawing blood, she said.

“It kind of opens up the door to health care careers,” she said.

Hannah Houck, 53, of Pleasant Gap, hopes to work in a doctor’s office once she completes the course.

“When I lost my job, I thought ‘Now is my opportunity,’ ” she said. “You get to learn a lot of different things.”

The demand for medical professionals has created a growing interest in South Hills’ three-year diagnostic medical sonography program, in which students learn to perform several types of ultrasound imaging, Spinelli said.

She said it’s a “hot” field of study, despite the difficult academic requirements and the need to be willing to move, because of the demand for technicians and the pay scale they can expect.

Another popular choice is the school’s medical office specialist program, which teaches students to work in doctors’ offices or to handle medical coding transcription or billing from home. That program has grown to the point that the internship program has been divided into two segments.

“We get so many calls coming in we don’t have anybody left” to send out on internships, she said.

She estimates that 87 percent of students leave with a job in their chosen major. Of those, 30 percent are hired after completing their internships.

“You can’t go anywhere without seeing some of our grads in some employment aspect,” said South Hills Career Services Assistant Rachel Yoder. “Most likely they get scooped up right after their internship.”

There is a growing interest from employers for highly skilled and specially trained employees, Michelone said.

“It’s that two-year degree-type person a lot of the employers are looking for,” he said.

When students complete a program at CPI, they can take further steps to add to their education. About 60 percent of CPI’s high school grads enter the work force upon completion of their studies.

“I think the secret is educating our young people to what careers are out there,” Michelone said.

Ultimately, Michelone would like to see CPI’s facilities and programs expand to encompass more two-year degrees. He said that goal is to be accessible, affordable and accredited.

Jennifer Thomas can be reached at 231-4638.