Classes customized for companies' needs

Even though Carmen Trujillo is bilingual, she's delighted these days when fellow workers at the Kmart distribution center in Sparks speak to her in Spanish.

Fourteen managers and supervisors at the facility recently completed a five-week course in conversational Spanish that heavily emphasized the vocabulary of a warehouse "module forklift," for example, and "expiration date." The course in warehouse Spanish, which was custom designed by Truckee Meadows Community College for Kmart certainly is off the beaten track.

Officials of TMCC's Institute for Business and Industry, however, leap at chances to custom- design courses for regional companies.

"The answer is 'yes.' Now what was the question?" quips Richard Green, an assistant dean at TMCC.

"Our strategy always is to get the customer what they want."

With no full-time trainers of its own, TMCC's Institute for Business and Industry works as an educational broker for regional companies.

Private-sector executives explain their needs anything from improved business letters to highlevel computer applications and TMCC finds a teacher and arranges a class.

Recent examples?

* A class in rough-terrain forklift operation for a project at Truckee.

* Training in the use of e-mail in international communication.

* Safety training in the shipment of hazardous materials.

* Training dictated by the Occupational Safety & Health Administration

a pretty conventional class except that it needed to be delivered at 1 a.m.

in Fernley.

Prices vary.

Deb O'Gorman, director of the Institute for Business and Industry, explained that the program passes along the costs of instructors which can be anywhere from $38 to $200 an hour along with other costs and the institute's markup.

That puts the institute unapologetically in competition with some private training companies.

Michael Rainey, dean of TMCC's Outreach College, said the school looks to price its training 20 percent to 30 percent lower than its private competitors.

In addition, TMCC believes its 16-year history of developing customized classes provides a competitive advantage.

Rainey noted that the school's charter calls for it to provide education whether for credit or professional advancement and it often has spearheaded training in new fields where private training companies won't tread.

TMCC was the first in the area, for instance, to providing training in computer operation years ago.

Whether classes are customized or off the shelf courses taught regularly to businesses, much of TMCC's training business comes from manufacturing and distribution companies.

And because those industries have been caught in the national economic slowdown, so has the workload at TMCC's Institute of Business and Industry.

The institute commonly works through the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada with companies scouting the area for new plant sites, but Rainey said that business, too, has been slow in recent months.

Even in the slowdown, however, safetyrelated classes remain strong, said Scott Alquist, who coordinates the institute's safety programs.

He already has 15 courses scheduled between now and the end of the year.

Also strong, Green said, are industrial certification classes such as those for welders.

And the institute offers a growing number of classes that reflect the increasingly bilingual nature of northern Nevada workplaces.

The class at Kmart's distribution center, for instance, was designed by instructor Robert Balderrama to improve the center's performance by allowing workers and supervisors to communicate better.

Managers and supervisors met for an hour twice a week for sessions led by Balderrama, then put the lessons to work on the warehouse floor.

"The program has been very beneficial to both employees and Kmart as a whole," said Trujillo, the human resources generalist at the plant who today hears fellow managers speaking to her in Spanish.