Denise Funderburgh of Hampshire had been out of high school for 30 years and was the single parent of children age 28 and 30 when she sucked up her courage and went back to college. Now she has a career as a dental assistant.
Eric Casick of Marengo was a 36-year-old with three children and had never worked a day in his life at a real job. He didn’t need to, since he ran his own business retailing what he refers to as “illegal pharmaceuticals” “on the street.” But after a term in prison he decided to learn how to be a professional welder.
Stephen Sarley of Wheaton was in his 30s when his longtime job at a St. Charles home-improvement store was eliminated. But he had heard that Fox Valley factories have become desperately short of workers who can do the high-tech stuff needed in today’s manufacturing. Now he’s on his way to a new career as a computer-numerical control operator of factory machinery.
These three are among the students who have either found new careers or are on the way to them thanks to a program at Elgin Community College called “Accelerating Opportunity.” Director Pete Almeida said the program takes in anyone who needs special help, such as students who don’t speak English well, who never finished high school, who are returning to college after years in the work world or who have problems with math. They can study toward one-year professional certificates in welding, in hi-tech manufacturing, in dental office assisting and in heating, ventilating, air conditioning and refrigeration work.
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And the program is working so well that last week an assistant secretary of education and two other officials from Washington came to the ECC campus to see how the program works.
Assistant Secretary of Education Johan Uvin spoke with students and teachers in the college’s welding lab, led a panel discussion with ECC administrators and teachers, and spent an hour questioning more than 30 Accelerating Opportunity graduates and students.
Besides their regular courses, Accelerating Opportunity students get career navigation and personalized advising from “support teachers.”
“Instead of a normal college individual who’s all alone, this is a group that can work together and help each other with homework,” said Joel Perez, a young single father who earned a GED certificate and now teaches some ECC classes and has a job as an engineer with a local factory. Perez was the featured speaker at the college’s spring 2014 commencement.
“This program has opened so many doors for me,” Perez told the delegation from Washington.
Students attend their career and technical courses as a team and stay together throughout the year. They have to attend a non-credit class designed to show them how to do what is expected in college and the workplace. A “career navigator” works with them to provide additional career and employability training, which teacher Elizabeth Soderquist said involves such “soft skills” as how to communicate, how to work as a team and simply getting to the class or the job on time.
The program’s “support teachers” also help the students find internships and look for jobs.
“These jobs start at $30,000 or $40,000 a year,” said ECC welding teacher Dave Reich. “This has made a big difference in a lot of people’s lives. They leave here and within a month they’re in a job with a 401-K and insurance.”
The teachers said the biggest obstacles Accelerating Opportunity students face are personal work habits and the need to do math, such as reading micrometers and rulers. “It’s easier for us to get a welder hired than it is for them to stay employed for three months,” Reich said.
“I’m a graduate now and I would not have graduated without the Accelerating Opportunity class,” said Casick. “My kids thought I was crazy to go back to school at this age. But I’ve been in and out of incarceration and that has stopped now. I’m riding this wave.”
“I dreaded the thought of coming back after being out of school such a long time,” said Funderburgh, the 49-year-old dental student. “There was so much to catch up on. I don’t think I would have made it through without the extra support I got from this program.”
Ryan Kaesberg, 26, of Streamwood, said he got into some trouble when he was in high school in Elgin School District U46 and ended up being sent to what is now the Gifford Street High School for problem students. But he said that after finishing the ECC welding program, he works as a pipe fitter, traveling to job sites all over the Midwest.
And now, Kaesberg adds, he can look with some superiority at his cohorts who got four-year degrees. “You ask a lot of those people who come out of college, ‘How much of what you studied do you actually use on the job?’ and they say, ‘Maybe 6 percent.’ I use what I learned every day.”
“We don’t want to offer programs that don’t lead directly to a job,” said Reich.
“I have apprentices working all over the Fox Valley,” said another teacher, and a teacher in the dental-assistant courses said she gets calls from dentists looking for trained employees almost daily.
A student who sat next to Uvin said 20 years passed since he dropped out of high school before he decided to go back to school and entered an English as a Second Language class. He said he originally had aimed only at a GED certificate but the Accelerating Opportunity staff helped him “discover my ability to go further.”
“Now I’m encouraging my children not to make the same mistakes I did,” he said. “You can’t change the past. But you can change the future.”
A man on the other side of the room said he had earned a bachelor’s degree in radio, but couldn’t find a job there in this era of shrinking “old media.”
“I finally realized I was kidding myself. I’m never going to get a job in that,” the man said. “But I knew manufacturing is on the upswing.”
“The president often says our task is to restore competitiveness to all Americans, and that’s what we’re seeing here today,” Uvin said.
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