Five Core WIB Roles

CAPACITY BUILDER

The Process Technician Program

Despite the preponderance of high-tech workers in the region, the mobility of these workers between industries is surprisingly limited. The Process Technician Program (PTEC) is intended to facilitate this mobility and hence enhance capacity within the local workforce.

The twenty-week intensive certification of achievement program - five days a week with six hours per day - was implemented, and its first cohort graduated in December 2006 with only one of the original twenty enrolled students failing to finish the training.

Candidates for this intensive displace worker training program are screened to assess their employability, and must go through a Wonderlic Basic Skills Test, agility test, and background check. A second cohort expected to graduate in June of 2007 has thirty-two students currently enrolled, and the third and last cohort is expected to graduate around Thanksgiving. Over seventy-five percent of graduates from the first cohort are currently employed and doing well.

Those who do not qualify for the intensive displaced worker program can enroll as a regular student and pursue a certification of completion that is closer to the regular community college structure and has eleven extra units for courses in Intermediate Algebra, Chemistry, Physics and English. In addition, Los Medanos College has designed an associate degree program. The college is working closely with local companies and the WDBCCC to avoid flooding the job market by attempting to deliberately match the number of graduates to the number of expected jobs offered.

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