Press release
North Central State College will establish a Crawford County higher education and training site at 130 N. Walnut Street in downtown Bucyrus. The Crawford County Board of Commissioners is providing space to the College in its former Board of Elections building for a lease of $1 a year.
This is being made possible by grants from State of Ohio Higher Education Improvement Fund, the Community Foundation for Crawford County, the Timken Foundation of Canton, and Dr. and Mrs. Joseph Shadeed. Additional funding will be sought to complete the project.
According to Representative Jeff McClain, Ohio House District 87, “In this capital bill, Ohio is advancing projects in meaningful ways that will contribute to our great state’s economic recovery as well as impact student success while encouraging collaboration among our institutions.
The collaborators, who kept the vision of a new higher education center alive, are bringing college to community with strategic and thoughtful investment. North Central State College has proven through this collaborative process that higher education is willing to act quickly and creatively in order to help propel the state of Ohio, and in particular the citizens and students of the Ohio House District 87, to new heights of success.”
The new Crawford Higher Education Center is a community and College collaboration to make higher education and workforce development training more accessible and convenient to the Crawford County community, according to Dr. Joe Shadeed, a retired orthodontist who has helped spearhead the project and encouraged North Central State to become involved.
Shadeed and other community leaders believe bringing College classes and skill training to the county will improve the educational attainment level of county residents and provide a better trained workforce for local businesses and manufacturers.
“North Central State’s physical presence in Crawford County will be an inspirational catalyst for change in our county,” said Janet Pry, president of the Community Foundation of Crawford County. “We believe this new Crawford Higher Education Center will provide an educational and economic boost by offering a local training site and contributing to the success of the county’s employers.”
Nearly $2.2 million will be raised from public and private sources over the next year to renovate and equip the 7,000-square-foot space to establish the new learning center and fund the initial five years of the Center’s operation. After that period, the College will assume the expense of operating the Center. The community group and the College hope the Center is ready for students by fall term in 2015, dependent on fund-raising.
North Central State President Dr. Dorey Diab said that Crawford County’s post-secondary educational attainment level lags behind neighboring counties and Ohio as a whole, while local businesses and manufacturers today have a significant need to fill job openings with educated and skilled workers. According to College research, by 2016, there will be 240 manufacturing job openings and 163 health-related job openings in Crawford County.
“However, a skills gap now exists in Crawford County with high-skill jobs going unfilled. This leaves manufacturers and others trying to seek employees elsewhere,” Diab said.
Carter Machine President Annie Carter, who has been involved in this community project, has been very concerned about the skills gap and believes that the Crawford County Higher Education Center will encourage those lacking in work skills to begin higher education and skills training in order to fill local job openings, particularly in manufacturing and health care.
According to Bucyrus City Schools’ Superintendent Kevin Kimmel, the Crawford County Higher Education Center has the potential to fill a very important void in the county by creating opportunities for people of all ages to improve their skills.
” It is critical for businesses and industries in the area to employ individuals who have the necessary skills and education to fill positions,” said Kimmel, who has been involved in the development of the Center. “As this project becomes a reality, one very important barrier is removed for people in Crawford County who want to prepare themselves for these good paying jobs. That barrier has been the lack of access and the inability to travel to a higher education facility outside of the area.”
It was in 2011 that Crawford County community leaders approached North Central State College with their concerns about the county’s poor educational attainment levels and a growing need among local businesses and manufacturers for skilled workers.
Collaborators in this project include the Crawford County Board of Commissioners, Crawford County Economic Development Office and 20/20 Visioning Project, Bucyrus City Schools (representing all Crawford school districts), The Community Foundation of Crawford County, Crawford County Jobs and Family Services, Pioneer Career and Technology Center, North Central State and its College Foundation, and area companies, such as the Timken Company, United Bank, Carter Machine Co., and others.
“As a group, we considered the current status and creation of additional options and decided that we want a greater higher educational focus on the county with physical presence by our Mansfield-based community college,” Shadeed said. “And when the county commissioners offered us the opportunity to utilize its former Board of Elections building, we jumped at the chance.”
The new Center’s educational offerings considered and developed by the community committee and the College will focus on training for careers in manufacturing, health care, and business, and will include developmental classes to prepare for college as well as tutoring, enrollment and financial aid services. Initial class offerings with on-site instructors will include Introduction to Health Care, as well as a business major program to begin on site with potential to transfer to the College’s main campus in Mansfield. (North Central State’s business department is currently working on a program that could be offered fully at a location such as this one.) A complete, condensed Associate of Arts degree program, will be designed for cohort groups of students who stay together through all required classes until graduation, a proven path for achieving student success.
An array of different manufacturing, design and engineering tech courses, as well as courses in operational management and industrial safety, could be offered, while the Center will emphasize working with local employers and manufacturers to design customized workforce development training and certificate programs. Specialized workforce development training will utilize the Center’s computer lab. With the help of the college’s recently awarded $2.9 million training grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, the college is working on developing training, including robotics training, which could be taught at the Bucyrus center.
The new Higher Education Center also plans to offer an entry-level general education series of classes, including English, history, and math. North Central State will move its current distance learning classes from Bucyrus City Schools’ administrative office to the new Center and work with local educational partners to offer GED and other services. Other educational institutions, such as Pioneer Career & Technology Center, Franklin University, and The Ohio State University, may utilize classroom space depending on availability.
The new Crawford Higher Education Center will be renovated to include three high-tech, multi-functional classrooms for on-site teaching, a computer lab for students and workforce training needs, an office, lobby seating area, and counseling room, as well as disabled-accessible restrooms.