The Adobe Flash Player is required to view this multimedia interactive. Get it here.

Sinclair provides scholarships, resources for displaced workers

Sinclair gets grant from Walmart Foundation to help jobless

Man, 68, drowns at Caesar Creek Lake
5/26/12
Water rescues prompt warning from health officials
5/25/12
Beach Waterpark sued for failure to deliver
5/25/12
Raleigh Trammell’s defense opens in felony trial
5/25/12
UD to move satellite campus to Dublin
5/25/12
> More headlines

By Dave Larsen, Staff Writer 8:12 PM Sunday, December 13, 2009

DAYTON — Lawrence Smith turned to Sinclair Community College after losing his job of 17 years when General Motors’ Moraine truck assembly plant closed last December.

“There’s no work anywhere within a reasonable driving distance and no way of really coming close to what I made with the education that I have,” said Smith, 51, of Dayton.

Smith, a high school graduate, is pursuing an associate’s degree in automation and control technology with robotics.

Sinclair is providing scholarships, academic counseling and workshops to Smith and other displaced workers through a $336,500 grant the school received in August from the Walmart Foundation.

“Through that budget, we were able to hire two dedicated counselors to work strictly with displaced workers, providing them with a central location on campus to go to for resources in transition,” said Melissa Tolle, director of the Walmart Brighter Future project at Sinclair.

The counselors define education and career action plans for displaced workers and connect them with resources to help put them back to work, Tolle said.

Sinclair has awarded Walmart Brighter Futures scholarships to 32 students, totaling $32,000. Most recipients are new students coming to Sinclair for the first time after losing their jobs, Tolle said.

“Over the course of the grant, which is a two-year project, we will probably be able to impact 60 to 100 people with that,” she said.

Not all of the displaced workers are from industrial fields.

John Bair of Butler Twp. will start at Sinclair in January with help from a scholarship, having lost his computer job in 2007 because of company downsizing.

Bair, 51, earned a bachelor’s degree in information technology in 1980. He realized he needed “a different direction,” and will study health information management systems.

“I’ve seen jobs where they advertise for computer people, but you need to know the health maintenance codes, the billing systems,” Bair said.

Smith hopes that earning an associate’s or bachelor’s degree will open the door to a new career.

“Being unemployed is hard if you’re used to working all your life,” Smith said.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2419 or dlarsen@DaytonDailyNews.com.

More information

Contact Sinclair’s displaced worker counselors at (937) 512-4646 or visit www.sinclair.edu/displacedworkers.

Share this article