Transcript

My name is Ron O’Meara, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Wiregrass Georgica Technical College.  I want to talk a little bit about Wiregrass Technical College, which is an outgrowth of two colleges that merged together. 

We have East Central Technical College and Valdosta Technical College merged back in July of 2010.  Valdosta, if you look at the history of this, both campuses started in the 1960s as a way to do workforce development for the people in their service area.  We offer programs for a technical certificate of credit, which are short term programs that could be a semester or two at the most.  Two diploma programs and then degree level programs, which would last two years or so in length.  Our mission is workforce development, to allow students to be able to go out into the workforce and find employment.  We also do things where people want to come back and enhance their skills, get some additional training, and take advantage of some other opportunities in the workforce for better types of employment. 

Our students range in ages from right out of high school through people in their 60s and 70 years of age that come out to us for a variety of reasons.  A lot are coming for the workforce development, but some come out to—are just interested in taking some classes.  They’ve never had the opportunity before in their life and want to be able to learn some new things and keep current with some of the changes that are going on out in the workforce.  Our largest number of students are in that Allied Health fields.  And that’s very popular with the healthcare.  But we offer programs from accounting, business level programs. 

We offer programs in the technical and industrial areas, from welding, automotive, auto collision repair, those types.  We offer programs in the Allied Health fields.  We also offer programs in professional services, which gets into culinary, cosmetology, horticulture, things of those nature.  We also have an arts and science area that deals with the general education core, so students can come here, take their core classes from Wiregrass, and transfer to a four year institution be it Valdosta State or wherever else they want to go.  And those courses are accepted right into their four year degree program.  For more information on Wiregrass Georgia Technical College, access our website at   www.Wiregrass.edu.