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Report from the Road: An Ambitious Plan to Train Ohio Workers for New Jobs

Summary: 
Dr. Jill Biden and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis today kicked off a three-day “Community College to Career” bus tour to highlight the unique role community colleges play in developing a flexible, highly-skilled 21st-century workforce to meet emerging regional business needs.
Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis and Dr. Jill Biden visit DG Medical

Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis and Dr. Jill Biden visit DG Medical on the Community College to Career Tour (CC2C). They will be stopping at locations in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina to highlight the importance of community colleges in fostering careers.22 February 2012

Dr. Jill Biden and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis today kicked off a three-day “Community College to Career” bus tour to highlight the unique role community colleges play in developing a flexible, highly-skilled 21st-century workforce to meet emerging regional business needs.  Secretary Solis is writing updates on the trip from the road.

Dr. Biden and I just visited DG Medical in Centerville, Ohio, to hear about the incredible BioOhio Workforce development partnership that is helping community colleges like Sinclair Community College prepare Ohioans for jobs in the growing biomedical manufacturing industry.

Sinclair is working with former GM/Delphi employees and other dislocated workers to get retraining to perform jobs making medical devices and life-saving drugs. They are part of a BioOhio partnership that has brought together industry leaders and six Ohio community colleges to match workforce needs with course offerings.

The ambitious goal is to graduate 700 Ohioans and place them in biosciences jobs as clean technicians, shipping clerks, packaging experts, manufacturing technicians and test engineers.  More than half of existing program graduates already have found good-paying jobs in this field. Also, incumbent workers are being trained to move up the career ladder to become team leaders and front-line supervisors.

Watching this unique partnership at work illustrates why health care industry job growth continues to help drive our recovery forward.

Want to join the conversation by sharing how community colleges and industry partners are working together in your community?  Share your story at http://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/communitycollege/tour and follow and engage with the tour on Twitter with the hashtag #CCtour.

You can see more of Secretary Solis' posts at Work in Progress, the Department of Labor's official blog.

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