A lot of community college students work to pay their own way through school and to cover living expenses. But many aren’t getting the experience they’ll need to land good jobs and thrive, confident in the knowledge they can do the work.
“Many of our students are working, but maybe not in the fields for which they’re training and being educated,” says Germanna Community College President Janet Gullickson. “So our job is to create the experience for students. That isn't about being a waitress or about being a custodial worker, although those are great jobs, but really about working in your field, be it nursing be it cybersecurity, be it engineering.
“And so with that in mind, we are announcing Germanna Works,” Gullickson said. “Germanna Works is not necessarily a new thing. But it is something that we have been doing that we want to ratchet up a little bit more with help from our great communities.
Dr. Tiffany Ray, Germanna Vice President for Student Services, explains: “The Germanna Works program gives our students the opportunity to get hands-on experience in the field, to learn about themselves, and to implement the skills they’ve learned in the classroom in the real-life workplace.”
It’s often called “experiential learning.”
“So when they’re graduated and in their field, they are ready to hit the ground running their first day of work,” Gullickson said.
Gullickson said everywhere she goes, employers tell her they can’t find workers with the skills they need. They tell her they increase pay and benefits and still can’t fill openings with qualified applicants.
“So this is absolutely perfect for the workforce crisis that we are in right now,” Gullickson said.
“As a technical college as well as a transfer institution, it is our responsibility to respond to the concerns of those employers. Germanna Works allows us to do that.
“It will help our community by allowing people to work In the industries they want to work in, and it will help employers, because students will be on the job even before they graduate,” Gullickson said.
Becky Morris, Germanna Works Internship Coordinator, said: “We have a vested interest in making sure that the students we send out from our programs, whether they’re academic or technical and trade programs, are ready to be good employees for our constituents.
"Part of what we do here, at Germanna, is train students, giving them the technical knowledge that they need to be great employees,” Morris said.
Heather Diritto, Coordinator of Career & Transfer Services at Germanna, said: “Historically, a lot of our students who are in IT and Business and Allied Health, and, of course, in our apprenticeship programs, have a very direct line in experiential learning. We would like to talk to all students --our students who are in General Studies, planning to transfer, but maybe they take an interest in something like Historic Preservation – something in Fredericksburg. We would love that.”
Germanna Works student Kallie Buchanan said: “My career path is healthcare, so my internship will be at a fire department [as an EMT]. This internship is going to help me be more confident in my career path.”
Tom Locher of Cedar Mountain Stone in Culpeper said the company had five Germanna students in its apprenticeship program last fall. “It's a great partnership with Germanna. Students can come work for us, earn a degree, work full time, with pay and benefits and a 401k, insurance, and we pay for 100 percent of their tuition, and they have an associate’s degree and a job at the end of the process.”
Rachel Overbey of Mary Washington Health Care said it helps both students and MWHC “getting students to come in, working side by side [with MWHC personnel] and getting that experience in their career path, knowing they can do the job.”
Dr. Fafa Baker of Rappahannock Electric Cooperative said, “We’ve hired interns to work in our cybersecurity department. It’s important for any student to be able to receive that hands-on training—that opportunity.”