Exeter Job Corps rebounds from enrollment freeze

TRAINING DAYS: Katrina Thorson, a graduate of the Exeter Job Corps, is currently employed as a welder at General Dynamics Electric Boat at their Quonset Point manufacturing facility. / COURTESY ELECTRIC BOAT
TRAINING DAYS: Katrina Thorson, a graduate of the Exeter Job Corps, is currently employed as a welder at General Dynamics Electric Boat at their Quonset Point manufacturing facility. / COURTESY ELECTRIC BOAT

In January 2013 Exeter Job Corps, a residential training facility for at-risk, young adults, was forced to close one of three dormitory wings as the federal government froze enrollment across the board for programming at 125 outlets nationally. Its future, like prospects for many of the young people who turn to the program, was in doubt.
Yet since then, as the U.S. Department of Labor lifted the freeze, the program has rebounded as well as any in the country, which is good news for local employers. Exeter still managed to be ranked fourth out of 125 Job Corps programs nationally for fiscal 2014.
And since the current fiscal year began in July, that ranking for overall performance, including job placement, has increased to No. 1, said Regan L. Fitzgerald, director of public policy for Adams & Associates Inc. of Columbia, Md.
The private firm runs 15 Jobs Corps programs across the country, including the one in Exeter.
The dorm wing that closed has since reopened, Fitzgerald said.
“We’re 26 of 26,” said center Director Jason Menard, referring to the number of graduates who found employment in fields ranging from the culinary trade to welding in the July-August time frame.
That includes 24 who found full-time work and two working part time. Three others have enrolled in college after graduating. Disadvantaged students, aged 16-24, who attend for free if accepted, also have the option of enrolling in the military after graduating, he said.
Projected enrollment has increased to 185 for the 2015 fiscal year, after dropping to 150 from a maximum of 200 because of the enrollment freeze in fiscal 2014, Fitzgerald and Menard said. The number of students fluctuates, based on open enrollment, Menard added.
But Menard hailed the past fiscal year as a success. Of 150 students enrolled, 136 graduated and 116 were placed either in full- or part-time work, further education or the military, Menard said. That placement rate is greater than 83 percent, he added. “Adams & Associates is very proud of the work that our center director and his team have done in Rhode Island,” Fitzgerald said. “Their ranking shows the excellence of the center and the excellent work they’re doing for the state.”
Jason Vlaun, manager of human resources for General Dynamics Electric Boat, echoed that praise, saying EB, which employs approximately 3,300 at its Quonset Point facility in North Kingstown, has hired recruits from the Exeter Job Corps that grow with the company.
“We’ve hired several graduates in welding over the last five years [at the Quonset facility],” Vlaun said. “They have the technical training for welding as well as the job readiness. They’re prepared to enter the workforce. We’re getting an individual more qualified to come here because of their pre-employment work readiness.”
While Vlaun said EB doesn’t track the number of Exeter Job Corps graduates it hires, he said EB does “a lot” of information sessions and targeted recruiting sessions with them.
“For the most part, there’s a high retention rate, because it’s putting them in a field they have a passion for, that they’ve got training for,” Vlaun said. “I don’t see a lot of turnover with the folks from Exeter Job Corps.”
While some of those graduates would be working on the Virginia-class submarines today, they would be expected to work within five to seven years on the Ohio-class submarines, he said.
“It’s very important they’re becoming proficient in their trade and becoming potential mentors to others when we have our ramp-up at the end of the decade,” he said.
Launched in 2004 as part of a national program now 50 years old, the Exeter Job Corps has received $63 million in federal funding since its inception, Fitzgerald said. The funding is provided in five-year procurement contracts and will need to be renewed within the coming year, she said. Funding cuts totaled 10 percent in 2013, Fitzgerald added, but she could not provide a dollar amount for the portion that had been restored when the freeze was lifted. “It was a partial restoration in order to staff the reopened wing and add an additional trade instructor,” Fitzgerald said.
As of Sept. 1, the center had 178 enrolled students and operates on a $6.4 million annual budget, said Stephen Barr, a U.S. Department of Labor spokesman. The average stay for students is 10 to 11 months, but they can remain in the program up to two years.
U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, who with the entire Rhode Island congressional delegation has publicly championed Exeter Job Corps, said via email through a spokesman that he’d like to see the facility enrolled to capacity, but is not sure the programming will be stable in the future, though funding has increased nationally.
“Job Corps gives kids who are at risk an opportunity to connect to the workforce and reach their potential,” Reed said. “It’s about using education and job training to help young people get career skills and build a better life for themselves, which strengthens our community.”
A Labor, Health and Human Services and Education appropriations bill reported out of subcommittee for fiscal 2015 would have provided an increase to $1.7 billion for the entire Job Corps program from the $1.61 billion allocated in fiscal 2013 and $1.69 billion allotted in fiscal 2014, Reed added.
While that latest funding appropriation has strong bipartisan support, Reed said, “The future is unclear. Sequestration was very damaging to Job Corps and other programs. Sequestration could be coming back unless we can come to another budget agreement.”
At the center, Menard said he does not have access to funding data and focuses strictly on programming, encouraging students through their training to pursue careers, not just jobs. The fields they can be trained in include basic and advanced culinary training, welding, construction, business certification and health technology.
And since July 1, Exeter has added training for a new trade: safety and security, or protective services, the kind of skills that lead to work as federal security screeners at the airport, for instance, Menard said. Exeter’s deputy director did an analysis that included relationships with the military and Rhode Island police that illustrated a demand for this type of training, he said. Eight students are enrolled in that new program, he added.
The students who come to Exeter are typically from the Greater Providence area and Rhode Island, though there also are out-of-state Job Corps students who have transferred here, Menard explained. Some of these students are homeless, some haven’t finished high school, while others are in school or in college, and rethinking their career track, he said.
“We do open enrollments every other week,” he said. “As they come in, they do Power Point presentations of the jobs they want, and research market analysis [so they’re] realistic about earnings and the physical demands. We make sure before we invest in those students that they pick a career they wish to really pursue and not just try to wing it.”
Menard’s favorite success story is of a 22-year-old Rhode Island woman whom he declined to identify who was not disciplined until she entered Job Corps. While she had no rules at home, the Exeter program is highly structured and includes daily chores, roll call and accountability checks, in addition to the career training students receive, he said.
“To get the benefits of the program, you have to follow the program,” he said. “She realized it was a lot easier to go with the program to get what you need.”
She became vice president of the Exeter Job Corps’ student-government association, earned an associate degree at the Community College of Rhode Island, and is employed at a hotel chain in the state. Recently, she returned to speak to students at one of the biennial graduation ceremonies held during the year, he said.
“We challenge people on the commitment, and in the end, the majority of our students rise to the occasion,” he said. •

No posts to display