Money marked for rural areas

ALBANY — Linn-Benton Community College has received a $560,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to help develop its Radiological Technology Program into a statewide Community College Partnership Program.

The grant is part of a $125 million Community-Based Job Training Grant from the federal government to fund 70 community college job-training programs nationwide.

According to Ann Malosh, LBCC Workforce Education and Training Division dean, the grant will fund a program to deliver radiological sciences education to rural, coastal, and outlying communities statewide.

The program will bring together 10 of Oregon’s community colleges to educate students in areas where the demand for qualified and registered radiological technologists in health care facilities is unmet.

Oregon received a total of $2.9 million from the grant for the Oregon Healthcare Workforce Partnerships project, a public/private collaborative effort involving 147 local community college, workforce, employer, and education partners, and 14 statewide partners.

The purpose of the job-training grant is to build capacity at community colleges to equip workers with the skills needed for local industries that are projected to experience high growth, and for industries where demand for qualified workers is exceeding supply.

According to Malosh, LBCC’s project will allow students to train in their own community, encouraging students to remain and work in their hometowns.

The project will also fund a new room in the Health Career and Training Center at Samaritan Health Services in Lebanon. The new facility will be equipped with digital equipment, a full-time staff person and software to take the traditional rad tech program and offer it as distance education.