When Todd Donald arrived at The Capps Center in 2016, he noticed how pristine the facility looked where Mississippi Delta Community College delivers most of its workforce training.
“I knew there was a problem right there. It was too clean,” he says.
The cleanliness was a sure sign that the Indianola facility was being underutilized, according to MDCC’s vice president for workforce and economic development.
In the six years since, The Capps Center has expanded from two career-training programs to a dozen. There are more on the way, Donald told the Greenwood Rotary Club Tuesday.
A fiber construction program, the first in Mississippi’s college system, is weeks away from launching. An aviation mechanics program should come online by the summer.
Both additions, as with most of the training programs offered at The Capps Center, are designed to respond to a need for skilled workers in various parts of the state’s economy. The dramatic increase, for example, in the laying of fiber-optic cable by broadband providers has prompted MDCC to gear up to train individuals for that line of work.
About 700 trainees overall go through one or more of The Capps Center’s programs each year. Their preference has changed just during Donald’s time. Although the manufacturing training program used to be one of MDCC’s top occupational draws, it now struggles at times to have enough people interested to field a class. Meanwhile, the commercial driver’s license (CDL) and crafts programs are booming.
The crafts programs consists of classes in carpentry, welding, electrical, and heating, ventilation and air conditioning. Donald said the school might add plumbing so as to create a “construction academy,” in which trainees would be required to complete at least two of the specialties.
The Capps Center is most busy at night, since many of its trainees are already employed and looking to pursue a different career or secure a promotion at their present workplace.
The last two years, MDCC has been filling up some of its afternoons with high school students from the Greenville and Sunflower County school districts. This year’s version kicks off next week with pharmacy tech and CDL classes.
Donald would also like to see Mississippi replicate what he saw in Alabama while working in that state’s workforce development agency. There, every welding class would reserve 10 spots for work-release inmates, who would be transported to the training center for the instruction.
He said that Mississippi’s prison system is not presently set up to do the same. The benefits of providing marketable skills to inmates, though, could be substantial, he said.
“I think you’d see your recidivism rate go down significantly, and you’d get some true rehabilitation.”
- Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
