Kentucky's ranking nationally for the affordability of four-year public colleges.

$545,000 grant to bolster Ky. health-care work force

Univance donates $10,000 to LCC

Autism program leads to presentation at conference

Kentucky's ranking nationally for the affordability of four-year public colleges.

Kentucky's ranking nationally for the affordability of four-year public colleges.

Indiana ranked 50th and California was first.

Affordability, defined as the percent of income needed to pay for college expenses minus financial aid, was ranked by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

Kentucky ranked 7th in affordability of two-year institutions and 35th for private four-year schools.

To see complete results go to: www.highereducation.org.

Kentucky Enquirer
November 3, 2004

$545,000 grant to bolster Ky. health-care work force

FLORENCE - A $545,000 grant from Gov. Ernie Fletcher will help about 100 people in this area get health-care jobs.

The two-year grant from Governor's Discretionary Money was awarded last week to the Workforce Investment Area of the Northern Kentucky Area Development District.

The money will be used to create a pilot program that will offer job shadowing, training and placement for people in eight counties - Boone, Campbell, Carroll, Gallatin, Grant, Kenton, Owen and Pendleton.

Those eligible are people aged 16 to 21, other adults with no marketable skills and health-care workers who have been laid off.

The development district specifically chose the health-care industry for the program this year, but hopes to expand it in future years to other job clusters.

"We found there's a tremendous need for health-care workers," said Tonia Slone, youth specialist with the development district. "Hospitals and nursing homes are saying they can't find enough people."

According to statistics released in June by the Greater Cincinnati Health Council, an average of 10 percent of the nursing positions available at 12 area hospitals are unfilled.

Two case managers will be hired for the program. Candidates will spend time with various health-care workers to see what jobs they like. They will then receive training through a partnership with the Greater Cincinnati Health Council, Gateway Community and Technical College and Jefferson Community College. Training is expected to begin in January.

For more information, call (859) 283-1885.

Winchester Sun
October 29, 2004

Univance donates $10,000 to LCC

Lexington Community College received a sweet "Welcome to the neighborhood," gift from Univance Inc. Thursday in the form of a $10,000 donation.

LCC has been fund-raising for a little more than a year to try to raise the $4 million needed to build a new 25,000-square-foot classroom building on a parcel of land in the Winchester Industrial Park. With Thursday's donation, the total raised now stands at about $1.4 million. Currently, LCC is holding classes in the overcrowded College Park Library.

"We're very excited about this gift," said Jim Kerley, president and CEO of the Bluegrass Community and Technical College District. "We talked to these folks several months ago and they said. 'We'll try to do something.' This is a major gift for them and we really, greatly appreciate it. They are investing in the community by doing this."

Univance, located in the industrial park, has 100 employees and manufactures metal, machined pieces for transmissions. It produces parts for car manufacturers such as Honda, Suzuki and Nissan.

Univance President Yasutoshi Watarai, speaking through an interpreter, said the company's policy is to help the communities in which their plants are located. Winchester is home to the only Univance plant in the United States.

"We have a responsibility for ... society," Watarai said. "... The company is constructed, based on humans, employees, (their) knowledge and good skills. ... We will continue to provide support to the community."

"Our good employees help us create a wonderful product for our customers and create good ideas that help save money for our company," said Sandy Barber, manager of human resources and general affairs. "Our employees give so much to us and a good education helps them do that."

Kerley has said that once LCC raises $3 million, it will be ready to begin construction on the new campus. He said he hopes to be able to hold a celebration soon when they reach the half-way mark.

"We are not giving up on it," Kerley said. "We are continuing to move forward with it and we're going to make it happen."

Kerley said the change on July 1 that moved oversight of LCC from the University of Kentucky to the Kentucky Community and Technical College System has not hurt the school's efforts to build a new campus in Winchester.

"Dr. (Michael) McCall, the president (of KCTCS), for example, has been over here already," Kerley said. "He and I talked yesterday morning about this project. ... We see a lot more support than actually we got from the University of Kentucky to be candid with you.

"... He (McCall) is very supportive of having an off-campus operation here in Winchester. That's important. We must have that kind of support at the statewide level to go forth."

Daily Independent
November 3, 2004

Autism program leads to presentation at conference

CATLETTSBURG It's circle time in Becky Golden's classroom at Ponderosa Elementary. Six children cluster around Golden's assistant teacher, Carla Malone, who sits in a kid-sized chair in the corner in front of a blue poster-board background.

Malone leads the children in a song with verses about clapping, waving, laughing and dancing. She illustrates each verse with a Velcro-backed pictograph torn from a colored file folder. She drops each picture into a plastic box after showing it to the children.

There are more songs, more words and pictures. Malone leads the children through the months of the year, the seasons and letter recognition. She accompanies each activity with another folder of pictures.

"It's 45 minutes so crammed with academics that the kids don't realize it," Golden said.

After circle time the children move to workstations, individual desks at which they perform academic tasks. The ubiquitous folders with the Velcro pictures are here at the workstations, too.

The children are in Ponderosa's autism program. The folder and picture system is what she calls a visual strategy; the children use the cues to show them how the lesson is progressing.

Golden and Malone will share the program with educators this week in a presentation to the 12th annual Teaching-Learning Conference sponsored by Ashland Community and Technical College.

Autism is a developmental disability characterized by resistance to change in routine and difficulty with social relationships, verbal and non-verbal communication, play and imagination.

Autistic children often are intelligent but perceive the world differently, said the parent of one child in the Ponderosa program.

"Where we can filter out noise, they go into sensory overload," said Carol Cooksey, whose 7-year-old son Benjamin has been at Ponderosa since he was 4.

Golden developed Ponderosa's autism program about four years ago after she and Boyd County Superintendent Bill Capehart agreed the district wasn't meeting the needs of families with autistic children.

The district then had no teachers certified to work with autistic children, few on the special education faculty had autism experience, and parents were faced with the necessity of leaving the area to get the service their children needed, Capehart said.

Capehart, whose own academic background is in autism and neurological impairment in children, sent Golden to the Treatment and Education of Autistic and Related Communications Handicapped Children program at the University of North Caroline School of Medicine, one of the most prestigious such programs in the nation.

"She had a program up and running one year later," he said.

The Ponderosa program works because it combines trained teachers and an emphasis on an inclusionary setting. The children spend varying amounts of time in Golden's room. All spend at least part of the day in regular classrooms, Golden said.

Boyd County has the only comprehensive program for autistic kids from pre-school through 12th grade, Capehart said.

The district also works with parents to smooth transitions to middle and high school and to post-secondary education, he said. As a result Boyd County gets inquiries from all over.

"This year alone I've gotten about six calls from parents who have been referred from as far away as Nebraska," Capehart said.

The Ponderosa program has helped her child, Cooksey said. The Cookseys searched for a good program after Benjamin was diagnosed. They wanted him to start with the basics -

"We wanted him to be able to do academics but that would be no good if he couldn't learn to be social," she said.

At Ponderosa Benjamin gets speech and occupational therapy and instruction in math, reading and spelling. "Things have progressed better than we'd expected," his mother said.

The Teaching-Learning Conference is an annual gathering of educators from around the region; it typically draws more than 1,000 participants. This year's conference begins Thursday and continues Friday.

Golden said educators who attend her presentation will be able to use the techniques in their own classrooms right away.

"The training (in North Carolina) changed our lives. We revamped the whole program at Ponderosa and it's changed the kids' lives, too."