Pitt-Bradford offers continuing education for community
Aside from providing a source for high-quality bachelor’s and associate degrees, Pitt-Bradford provides the region with noncredit continuing education and workforce training.
These offerings include everything from craft and fitness classes for individuals to lean manufacturing for businesses.
Ray Geary, executive director of the Division of Continuing Education and Regional Development, said that he and his staff keep a close eye on workforce trends to determine what to offer.
Geary works with Pennsylvania’s job centers, known as CareerLink, and the federal Workforce Investment Board to determine what occupations are in demand in the region. Recent offerings to accommodate workforce needs have been paralegal and medical office assistant training.
Even where there is a need, Geary is careful not to overfill it. “We don’t want to saturate the market with a certain skill,” he said. For this reason, some courses are not offered every year, since there are a finite number of positions in the region for jobs such as paralegal.
In other cases, a business or industry approaches Pitt-Bradford for its training needs.
“We’re constantly touching bases with regional industries,” Geary said, including conducting needs assessments for trainings. Common skills Pitt-Bradford provides training in are management, supervision, communication, lean manufacturing, developmental math, project management and Microsoft applications such as Access, Powerpoint, Excel and Project.
Pitt-Bradford is also a partner in Pennsylvania’s WEDnetPA (Workforce and Economic Development Network of Pennsylvania). WEDnetPA provides guaranteed free training money to qualifying employers through its partners.
But not every skill learned through Continuing Education is necessary, some are just fun. Geary has several new personal enrichment courses scheduled for the fall, including ceramics in the ceramics studio on campus, a fall foliage photo trek in conjunction with the Allegheny National Forest Visitors Bureau and conversational French and Italian.
This summer, the division offered an expanded selection of enrichment programs for children from kindergarten through high school, including X-treme Science Camp, Pets ‘n’ Vets Camp, Medical Mysteries, What to Expect in College and TV Studio Production.
An increasingly popular flexible option for enrichment classes are online classes through Ed2Go, Geary said. Ed2Go courses are generally six weeks and $90. They begin several times a semester. Most are instructor-led, Geary said. Popular offerings include accounting fundamentals, medical terminology and Microsoft Excel2010. A new offering this fall is Photoshop CS6 for the Digital Photographer. For more information, visit www.ed2go.com/upb.
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