Staff Writer
LIMESTONE — Fifty-three young graduates of the Loring Job Corps Center (LJC) are now off to make their mark on the world. From as far away as Georgia and Tennessee, the graduates will be using the skills they learned in their CNA, medical administration, CISCO, commercial drivers license, administrative support, electrical, medical support, Painting, culinary, carpentry, and auto repair vocations to find careers, but they won’t be alone. Lori McMillon is the career transition specialist at LJC, and she helps prepare graduates to enter a fiercely competitive job market in the midst of this recession — many students even have a verified job waiting for them even before they leave the LJC. For students who don’t have a job in their pocket when they receive their diploma, Loring Job Corps graduates receive supportive placement services for up to 21 months.
Some graduates have high educational ambitions, and Job Corps program accommodates those students, encouraging them to participate in advanced training opportunities at other Job Corps Centers and/or college.
Forty-percent of the recent graduates chose to complete the medical administration vocation at the Center, making it the most popular vocation for recent graduates.
“The Department of Labor aligns the training programs at Job Corps Centers to be in-tuned with Labor Market Information in high growth industries,” said Kristie Moir, employment director at the LJC. “Loring has very successful industry aligned career technical training programs in the medical and automotive areas.”
Other popular areas of study include culinary, construction, and CISCO computer cabling and networking.
Regardless of the vocation chose by graduates, each of them worked with the career transition staff of the LJC for three to four weeks updating their portfolios, resumes’, cover letters and practicing their interviewing skills.
“It is our job to help them be as employer ready as possible,” Moir said. “We assist them with job searching both locally and through New England and New York.”
“Every opportunity is an opportunity for our students both locally and across our Region to make them even more employable and marketable in this industry,” she added. “[The LJC] promotes life long learning.”
Area graduates include Amanda Adams, Amber Gomm, Alisha Philbrook and Holly Sonnier of Caribou; Daniel Fowler and Elizabeth Pantojas of Limestone; Jessica DeWitt of Houlton; Bryan Grant of Woodland, Sara Fulton of Blaine, and Leigh-Ann Melton of Fort Fairfield.
