The Billings Adult Education Career Advancement program is what SD2 Adult Ed Director Woody Jensen calls “kind of a Burger King operation. We’ll do it your way.”

Participants work at their own pace to prepare for career certification. Certificates offered include medical transcriptionist, medical coding, phlebotomy technician, certified nurses aide, dental assistant, pharmacy technician, search engine optimization, CompTIA A+, customer service, sales and retail management; weatherization, web design, accounting assistant, administrative assistant and paralegal, which is an online program.

“We develop training programs that are tied to a national certification that are needed by employers in the community,” said Suzette Fox with Adult and Community Education.

To find out what employers are looking for, Adult Ed has partnered with local businesses to provide the proper training. That way, students can prepare for jobs with local employers.

“If an organization comes to us and says ‘We’d really like you to offer this,’ we try to research it and make it happen,” said Barb Gustafson with Adult and Community Education.

A new addition to the program is the pharmacy technician certificate. As part of their Adult Ed training, students will intern with local pharmacies. The internship program is in place at Billings Clinic.

“We’ve had students go through internships and be hired,” Gustafson said.

Part of the training for certification is provided by local companies. Brenda Segna, training and education coordinator for the phlebotomy laboratory at Billings Clinic, leads a phlebotomy class.

“We’ve gotten great response, and we’ve gotten some great employees out of it as well,” she said. “It works really well, and we’re just getting a lot of really positive response.”

Billings Clinic phlebotomy employees have to be certified by the American Society for Clinical Pathology. There are two ways to get the certification, Segna said. The first is complete an ASCP program. The second is to take the class and get a year’s experience in the field.

“At Billings Clinic, we no longer hire phlebotomists without ASCP certification,” Segna said. “This just helps us to help them.”

Beth Schlager, a CNA at Aspen Meadows, said she was looking for a career change.

Schlager did some research and discovered the Career Advancement program at the Lincoln Center, where she has been studying since September. She tested out of several of the classes that she already had experience in and will perform her internship in the Billings Clinic phlebotomy lab.

“It’s been amazing,” she said. “I like that it’s self-paced and you can work on your own. It’s just been a really great experience.”

Career Advancement trainees get all the education they need to enter the workforce.

“They pretty much cover everything,” Segna, of Billings Clinic, said. “They’re really equipped to work in a hospital or clinic setting.”

That is the goal of the Career Advancement program: to prepare students for a specific career.

“It’s my job to make sure that I have the criteria set that you as a student will need to complete this,” Gustafson said. “This is what the employer wants if you want a job with these businesses.”

Classes are offered during day and nighttime hours. Many of the computer and medical classes are self-paced. Back-end scholarships are offered, so students can sometimes earn their fee back upon completion of a class. Students can test out of classes they have a proficiency in, without paying a fee.

“All of our classes have a comprehensive final,” Fox said. “If they can come in and take the final without assistance from us, we mark them off for that class without charging them.”

The program continues to move in new directions, offering more online programs, such as the paralegal class, and looking for new businesses “willing to invest in us and their own employees,” Jensen said.

The Career Advancement program doesn’t just offer schooling, it offers real-world business experience, from the internships to the classes taught by local employers. The program prepares students for their new careers.

“I tell every student I talk to: ‘Our goal is to get you employed,’” Gustafson said.