Kevin DeBord has easily found work through the years as a machinist and die maker. At age 40 he was making a solid living and raising two teenagers with his wife, as he followed in the tool-and-die career of his father and uncles.

But last year, laid off from a local machine shop, DeBord found himself struggling to find jobs that he was qualified to do; the companies wanted workers with technology skills that he just didn’t have. At his brother’s urging, he took a tour of Sinclair Community College. Before he knew it, he was a midlife college student.

“I have 20 years’ experience, but it’s from the school of hard knocks,” he said. “Now I have to produce a certificate to even get looked at.”

Donning a cap and gown

As the region’s economy changes, many workers laid off from their jobs are starting over at Sinclair. Last year the college’s efforts to assist displaced workers were bolstered by the Walmart Brighter Futures Project. The project is funded by a $3.5 million grant from the Walmart Foundation that helps community colleges develop programs and services to put displaced workers back to work. The Walmart grant has helped Sinclair shape a one-stop shop for these workers. It supports two full-time counselors to work solely with this growing population of students and funds $1,000 scholarships to soften the expense of returning to school. It’s helped fund training in searching for jobs, networking and other critical skills for academic retention and job placement.

DeBord has benefited from these targeted services. After enrolling at Sinclair, he connected with Melissa

Tolle, assistant director of strategy development and project director of the Walmart grant. “She’s been great, because it was pretty overwhelming coming back to school again as a 40-year-old guy,” he said. “She helped me answer the questions ‘What do I do?’ and ‘How do I do it?’”

About 2,000 Sinclair students identify themselves as displaced workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines a displaced worker as someone 20 years old or older who lost or left a job because their plant or company closed or moved, there was insufficient work for them to do, or their position or shift was abolished. The influx of these folks into Sinclair isn’t likely to wane soon, as counselors are now seeing new enrollees who were laid off from their jobs two years ago.

They come with a unique set of challenges; like DeBord, most are middle-aged, with children and spouses to support. “It really is a unique population you are working with,” Tolle said. “The financial loss causes a lot of external stress. It’s a huge quality-of-life issue. These individuals were used to making good salaries; that has been stripped away from them.”

Fitting rooms available

Headlines blared the news: The local General Motors (GM) assembly plant was closing for good, putting more than 1,000 men and women out of work just days before Christmas. The community impact was great: lost jobs, lost wages, lost income tax, less disposable income fueling the local economy. The personal impact might be even greater: possible foreclosures, stressed marriages, depression and uncertain futures.

Community leaders mobilized to plot a response. Sinclair gathered two focus groups of GM workers just weeks before the plant closed. The workers shared their stories: mortgages to pay, children to send to college. These people were talking about more than just lost jobs. They had lost their identities; decades of comfortable middle-class lifestyles were slipping away. They were not just unemployed; they were uprooted from life as they knew it.

Tolle, who helped guide the conversation that day, won’t soon forget the stories. “People were willing to share how it was impacting their personal lives…foreclosures and divorce,” she said. “That is something that will stick with you.”

GM isn’t the only large employer to leave a trail of pink slips in the Dayton region. Delphi Corporation shuttered five plants. The Reynolds and Reynolds Company downsized through a merger. NCR

Corporation moved its corporate headquarters to Atlanta. Smaller, lesser-known companies have closed or shrunk, and the number of workers considered displaced has grown and grown.

The GM workers participating in the focus groups gave Sinclair’s staff a valuable piece of advice: They really wanted one person with whom they could work to navigate the college system. Enrolling, applying for financial aid, registering for classes – all of this could be bewildering for someone who last sat in a classroom more than 20 years ago. They didn’t need the extra frustration of being tossed from person to person to figure it all out.

A part-time counselor took on that role, while others at Sinclair did their best to guide and direct the workers through the process of coming back to school. But with the growing number of displaced workers and the unique needs of this group, something more had to be done. How?

The Walmart grant program appeared on the scene in May 2009. With only two weeks to hone a proposal,

Tolle and her cohorts hunkered down. “This would be our opportunity to consolidate our real point of contact for the students,” she said.

Sinclair was one of eight colleges to be funded. As a result, two full-time counselors came onboard to serve as displaced-worker specialists. They launched tools to help the workers determine what they wanted to study; they set up workshops on relevant topics, such as resume writing, computer skills and job searches. This summer they’ll run a job-search boot camp. Next year they hope to create a contingent of displaced workers to go through their basic classes together. The approach has been very hands-on; the students meet often with the counselors, and staff members reach out to students throughout the quarters.

At the same time, the counselors are trying to instill in the students the confidence to get through college on their own, said Matt Massie, director of career services. “Teach them to fish, and they’ll fish,” he said.

Hanging on

When the grant money runs out, Sinclair hopes to be able to continue this high-touch, personal approach.

The counselors currently reach about 17 percent of the displaced workers on campus and plan to serve more.

Chad Bridgeman, displaced worker counselor, said that displaced workers tend to fall into one of two camps. The first includes those who didn’t really like what they were doing anyway and see returning to school as the chance to reshape their lives. “It’s a great opportunity for them to try something they’ve always wanted to do,” he said. The more common scenario involves those in the second camp: lost, uncertain about the future and sometimes bitter that they are starting over in mid- or late life.

DeBord understands that struggle firsthand, as he works toward his degree in Computer Aided Manufacturing. “It’s terrible,” he admitted. “It’s frustrating, because I was making top money. I was leading jobs, had helpers…saying, ‘This is what I want done, and this is how I want you to do it.’”

Because they are rooted in the area, many displaced workers do not want to relocate. That makes retraining to find a place in the Dayton economy that much more crucial. According to Dan Foley, a Montgomery County commissioner, it’s important for the region for these workers to stay and be retrained. He and other community leaders are able to tout the workforce to potential employers, especially those in areas identified as potential growth industries for the region, such as logistics and distribution. Experienced workers who gain new skills are a great marketing point for the region, he said. “The people who are coming through the programs are helping us make the point to companies that they need to be here,” Foley said.

DeBord’s unemployment runs out soon, and he is trying to find work. He hopes to continue his classes toward his associate degree. Without the specialized help from Sinclair staff like Bridgeman and Tolle, he doubts that he would be forging ahead with his education. They’ve been his backbone, he said. “Those people have made it possible for me to hang in there.”

By Tracy Staley

Tracy Staley is a Dayton-based writer whose work has appeared in the Dayton Business Journal, the Nashville Business Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader, among others.