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Workplace Learning Connection Marks 10 Years

By June 26, 2008January 21st, 2019No Comments

Director considers a decade of progress as the Corridor recovers from flooding

–By Mary Lou Erlacher, WLC Director

Creating this article has a whole different feel for me today (June 12, 2008) than it did when I was offered the opportunity to write it just one week ago. In the midst of the flooding and the havoc it is producing in so many lives, it is difficult to focus on anything else.

Yet, the Corridor Business Journal will go to press and life will pick up its usual pace at some time but, hopefully, we will all take from this “break” in our routines, something of what is really important – coming together as communities to care about and to help each other in times of distress.

Coincidentally, the role and reach of the non-profit organizations in our communities is the essence of which this edition of the CBJ is dedicated and some of those roles will be all the more visible and vital because of this time of turmoil.

This brings me to the focus of this particular article which is the Workplace Learning Connection and the celebration of this organization’s ten years of successfully matching our region’s young people to opportunities to explore the careers of their choice and to become aware of what is available to them right in their own backyards!

The Workplace Learning Connection’s new logo is a picture of what we believe centers around the students and spreads out into the community to share with our youth what we, as the adult workforce, already know…that Iowa, and this region in particular, is truly a land of opportunity for whatever your skills and interests might be for a career.

This region is home to world-class, multi-national employers, world-class local entrepreneurs, and small businesses and industries of every type.

We call the results of the Workplace Learning Connection the “Ripple Effect.” The Workplace Learning Connection is the intermediary between schools and employers so the Ripple begins with a teacher asking for a worksite tour or a classroom speaker or a student requesting a one-day job shadow or an unpaid internship and we make the connection to the employer…one call…a single point of contact…and job has been done for more than 70,000 students and teachers as we have grown throughout the region in the past ten years! For St. Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids, the unpaid interns St. Luke’s has hosted has had a net result of hiring 29% of those young people once they completed postsecondary education and training; they are now, full-time adult employees of the hospital.

Working with all of the public and many of the private schools and more than 800 employers in our seven-county region, the Workplace Learning Connection has helped many of our young people in their decisions regarding postsecondary education and careers. It has also aided them in understanding the relevance of what they are studying in school and how that connects to their futures as adult workers and citizens.

For many students, they are aware, for the first time, that the career they seek is available here and nearly half they say they are considering living in Iowa. When our young people are better informed and better prepared to make postsecondary education and career choices and they are developing relationships with local employers that creates strong economic capital for the region in terms of a building a skilled and, potentially, available future workforce.

Together, we can show all of our young people that this area is home to healthy and dynamic communities and worksites – a place where families thrive and each individual can make a difference.

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The Workplace Learning Connection is a 501(c)(3) partnership of Kirkwood Community College and Grant Wood Area Education Agency serving in Benton, Cedar, Iowa, Johnson, Jones, Linn, and Washington counties with offices in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City.