When companies like General Electric, Procter & Gamble and Rockwell Automation need high-tech training for their employees, it's not long before Dennis Ulrich's phone rings.
Ulrich is the executive director of the Workforce Development Center at Cincinnati State University, which offers some of the area's largest employers highly specialized training tailored to specific needs.
By focusing on industrial training, HAZMAT courses, executive classes and a wide array of healthcare courses, the center has carved out a niche as an economic driver in southwestern Ohio.
"What makes us unique, I think, is that we offer an immediate return on investment," explains Ulrich. "We consult with our corporate clients, assess their needs and how to offer what it is that they need, but we also determine what their return on investment will be. We try to focus on programs that will have an immediate impact. We want to help them be more competitive in the marketplace."
In the case of General Electric, that meant launching the company's JETS -- jet engine tear-down school -- program. Since its inception, the program has instructed more than 1,100 of GE's engineers on design and maintenance issues with engines built at the company's Cincinnati plant. Now, GE has asked the center to take its program on the road to its other locations. P&G, for which the center instituted a process engineering course, has discussed offering the same instruction to its workers in China and India. Rockwell has shipped its employees to Cincinnati from around the country for Ulrich's programs.
As successes have accumulated, so has the center's clientele. About 80 companies now contract with the center for training, with growth expected to continue as word spreads.
The center also has looked for new territory to enter. As part of its industrial training curriculum, it began offering specialized "green technologies" training, like solar panel installation and weatherization, in recent years. It also was among the area's first to offer training in the booming bio-tech and bio-science fields.
Its latest effort is the Institute for Social Media, launched at the beginning of this year. Offering comprehensive courses dealing with the use of online sites for sales, customer service and recruiting of new employees, it also focuses on other areas, like legal issues.
Source: Dennis Ulrich, Workforce Development Center
Writer: Dave Malaska