Summer?
What summer?
Greg Dausch gave a little laugh Thursday morning as he pulled himself away from his computer monitor to talk about his most-favorite season of all.
That would be autumn, the director of the Monongalia County Technical Education Center said, when the facility on Mississippi Street is transformed in an intellectual epicenter for the adult learners out there.
Online registration for adult learners begins at 1 p.m. July 1, said Dausch, who had been online all morning himself ordering classroom supplies to get ready.
In the meantime, you can visit https://boe.mono.k12.wv.us/18/home to begin the registration process. You can also call the center at 304-291-9243 for more information.
From the practical side of paycheck potential, Dausch said, MTEC is where a student goes to learn a trade that will get him hired.
Tech center grads here can make a cherry pie or operate a plasma cutter. They can run a restaurant or write computer code.
They go into health care or home construction.
And many of them go directly from the job site to their graduation — because they’re already working.
“We get them trained and they take care of the rest,” Dausch said.
Which, in West Virginia, is how it works these days.
Education and industry watchers say that by 2030, 60% of state residents will need secondary training of some sort to be able to compete in the job market.
And right now, less than 50% of West Virginia’s high school graduates are going on to traditional four-year colleges after senior year.
“That’s what we’re here for,” Dausch said.
Sometimes, though, the learning is just plain fun at MTEC, the director said.
That’s why this year’s class of incoming adult learners can also learn watercolor painting and the craft of making stained glass mosaics.
They can jump into Zumba while learning how to converse in Italian.
“It’s a pretty diverse schedule of course offerings,” Dausch said. “A lot of them had to go away because of COVID, so we’re excited to be re-introducing them.”
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