Employers are invited to participate in a March 4 job fair for Roane State Community College students who are pursuing careers in health care and plan to graduate this year.
The fair is planned for Wednesday, March 4, from noon-3 p.m. at Roane State’s Oak Ridge campus, 701 Briarcliff Avenue. The event will be held in the Goff Health Sciences and Technology Building. Setup begins at 11 a.m. [Read more…]
Roane State Community College officials will celebrate the new Goff Health Sciences and Technology Building during a Friday morning ribbon-cutting ceremony in Oak Ridge. Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam will be a featured guest.
This new $13.8 million building at Roane State Community College mixes high-tech amenities with new teaching techniques, and it eases overcrowding at the Oak Ridge campus. It adds space for health science classes and programs such as surgical technology, organic chemistry, and pharmacy technician students. It also incorporates environmentally friendly design features such as a reflective white roof, lights that adjust automatically, geothermal wells that help heat and cool the building, and rain gardens that capture storm water runoff.
The high-tech amenities include “smart dummies” that can be programmed with symptoms to train nursing students, full multimedia and wireless systems in classrooms, and more than 300 computers, including in five computer labs. There is a distance education classroom with microphones hanging from the ceiling, and an engaged learning, or “flip,” classroom, where students do homework before class and come prepared to collaborate and solve problems.
A new surgical technology program, co-sponsored with Walters State Community College, will be housed here. There is a new organic chemistry lab, and Roane State’s pharmacy technician program is moving to Oak Ridge from the college’s main campus in Harriman. There is also a “flex lab” that can be easily and quickly configured to suit the training needs of area industries. It has a high ceiling and bay door, plenty of power and conduits, and gas and ventilation.
The new three-story, 64,000-square-foot building—officially named the Goff Health Sciences and Technology Building—might be described as Melinda Hillman’s “baby.” Hillman, who is Roane State’s vice president of advancement and community relations, has spent thousands of hours during the past six years working on the project, from its inception in 2008 through the planning and fundraising stages to the end of construction. She will be among those celebrating during a Friday morning ribbon-cutting ceremony that will feature special guests, including Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam.
“It’s sort of ‘birthing a baby,’” said Hillman, who clearly has a passion for the project and hasn’t taken a vacation in a year. “I’ve worked on it so long.”
Hillman and Owen Driskill, Roane State’s director of marketing and public relations, recently led reporters on a tour of the brick-and-coated-metal building, the last expansion that the 40-acre Oak Ridge campus can accommodate. [Read more…]
The main Roane State Community College campus in Harriman. The college also has a branch campus in Oak Ridge.
Roane State Community College will offer two new programs beginning in fall 2014: an associate of applied science in medical informatics and an associate of applied science in financial services.
The Tennessee Board of Regents approved the programs at its June meeting.
The two-year medical informatics program combines information technology, or IT, and health care. As health care providers increasingly use complex computerized records, they need qualified employees with computer skills and expertise in digital health care record-keeping.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the employment of medical records and health information technicians is expected to grow 20 percent through 2018. Technicians who also have IT skills are expected to be in particularly high demand. [Read more…]
Roane State Community College will launch a two-year program in surgical technology this fall.
The associate of applied science in surgical technology is co-sponsored by Roane State and Walters State Community College through the Smoky Mountain Health Sciences Consortium. The program will be offered at the Sevier County campus of Walters State and the Oak Ridge campus of Roane State. Streaming video technology will be used to offer courses to students at both colleges.
Labs will be held in the Goff Health Sciences and Technology Building at Roane State’s Oak Ridge campus. The new 64,000-square-foot, $13.8 million building will host its first classes this fall. Students will complete clinical requirements at area hospitals.
Surgical technologists prepare operating rooms, arrange equipment, and assist doctors during surgeries. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Outlook Handbook, employment of surgical technologists is projected to grow 30 percent through 2022. [Read more…]
There were actually two stars at Roane State Community College on Wednesday.
One was U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. She was there to celebrate the recent announcement of a $12.5 million grant to a group led by Roane State that will use the money to train students for health care careers and help them graduate.
The other star was Sunbright resident Loretta Starnes. She was once a pregnant teenage high school dropout who became a Roane State graduate and won a top student honor—the 2012 Roane State President’s Award.
U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis will tour the Oak Ridge campus of Roane State Community College on Wednesday to highlight federal investments in health care job training.
The tour comes about two weeks after the U.S. Department of Labor announced that a consortium led by Roane State had received a $12.5 million grant to offer more training for health care careers and help students finish their degrees. The Sept. 19 announcement included a total of 54 grants helping nearly 300 schools across the country.
The Wednesday tour starts at 11 a.m., and it will be followed by remarks by Solis and a press conference.
A consortium led by Roane State Community College received a $12.6 million federal grant to offer more training for health care careers and help students finish their degrees, the U.S. Department of Labor announced Wednesday.
The announcement included $500 million in grants for community colleges and universities across the country. The Roane State consortium was one of 27 funded nationwide, Roane State President Gary Goff said in a press release.
