ROME/UTICA — The new FastTrack Career Program at Mohawk Valley Community College offers a brand-new paradigm for underemployed people who might feel trapped in a low-paying, dead-end job, promised Timothy Thomas, MVCC’s assistant vice president for learning and academic affairs.

The FastTrack program offers an accelerated curriculum where a working person supporting a family doesn’t need to take two or more years out of his or her life for the college courses traditionally necessary to get reeducated for a new job.

“In 14 weeks or less, this can lead directly into a new career path,” Thomas said. “And it is all free of charge.”

Thomas said the FastTrack Career Program started in late November 2022 after MVCC received $500,000 from Oneida County in start-up funding for the program. MVCC recognized the program wouldn’t last long on just that funding, so they started reaching out to other revenue sources to continue offering FastTrack classes at no charge, Thomas said.

More recently, they have also received $976,000 in funding from Empire State Development to help FastTrack students into new careers.

They already have 237 students enrolled in the FastTrack program, he noted, and are reaching a population to whom they weren’t already providing services. Unlike the 25 percent of students who are 25 or older in traditional college courses, in FastTrack 72 percent are those older students. And where 11 percent of their traditional students identify as Black, now they serve 34 percent of that population, Thomas said.

There are now 35 FastTrack short-term credit and non-credit courses, all held at night on the Utica campus so the students can keep their day jobs while bettering themselves.

FastTrack job skills currently available include education and professional services, emergency services, healthcare, information technology, manufacturing, skilled trades and culinary services. Some of the most popular courses so far have been medical billing and coding, phlebotomy and paralegal, Thomas said.

They have recently partnered with the Mohawk Valley Community Action Agency to create curriculum to FastTrack students into new teaching positions. Thomas said they look forward to more partnerships like that in the future as they work with agencies to identify the necessary course work to be hired in a new career field.

MVCC personnel make it simple for prospective students to enroll.

“We wanted to make a concerted effort to make onboarding of students very convenient,” Thomas said. “When they are asked too many questions, it might turn them away. We just ask for basic information, and then we create the student ID, register them for the courses, purchase the books from the book store, mail them to their houses, and send them a schedule. All they have to worry about is showing up on the first day of class.”

Students can also easily receive guidance on what courses they might want to enroll in if they need it, Thomas said. For students unsure of what they want to pursue, an advisor is available to help them decide their own interests and align them with the course offerings.

And after the courses are completed, FastTrack advisors will also help students build their own employment networks while connecting them with potential employers along their new career paths.

FastTrack is expected to be a multi-faceted, stackable program where one course will lead to others that will open even more doors for the students’ futures, Thomas said.

“We don’t want this to be just a stand-alone program,” he explained. “We want this to be a jump-start to infinite possibilities.”

For more information on MVCC’s FastTrack Career Program, visit www.mvcc.edu/fast.