Success of Alaska Job Corps due to planning

MAT-SU -- One of many projects started by President Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964 under the Equal Opportunity Act, Job Corps has provided more then two million disadvantaged and impoverished young people with the vocational and social skills training they need to become independent and to obtain long-term jobs or to further their education. Out of the 50 programs that the Johnson administration created, only Job Corps and Headstart still exist today. The Alaska Job Corps Center, located in Palmer, has been called one of the best out of the 120 centers in the United States.

The center, which houses 250 residential students, has made a name for itself throughout the community of Job Corps Centers across the country as being one of the best centers to train youth to be productive members of society. Having rephrased the mission statement to three short words "Dare to Climb," Ivy Lanthier, center director, also said, "We are just a tool; the students must take the risk." The staff agrees.

Susan Van Gorder, programs director, said, "This center would not be what it is without the students. It is the students, their professionalism and their desire to better themselves that keeps this center running smoothly."

Three factors account for the facility's success. One, it was the first center that was built from the ground up to be a Job Corps Center. This allowed AKJCC to start from scratch. Most centers were put into buildings once meant for something else, then later converted into a learning facility. New buildings deserved new blood.

"Being able to hire from outside other than from within the system brings in new minds, younger ideas and an upbeat enthusiasm that some staff lose after years with other programs that haven't been successful," Lanthier said. "This center is something different and has never been done before. While the majority of directors around the country were assuming Alaska would fail, I was thinking that for this to really work, we needed to start off right."

The second factor is, many Job Corps administrators didn't believe the Alaska Center would work. The forecast of the Alaska Job Corps Center's prescribed failure made Lanthier's wheels turn. "The forecast was made for the simple reason that Alaska holds the highest national percentage in teen suicides and teen drug and alcohol abuse," he said. With the pressure to succeed mounting, the staff came up with a set of standards that has kept everything running smoothly from the onset, "Zero tolerance and stand firm. Once you bend and have a little acceptance, everything just snowballs from there. Zero tolerance was the only choice I had if I wanted this center to succeed," Lanthier said. And succeed it has.

Alaska Job Corps has been able to maintain a standard of excellence that most others fail to achieve. Again, it comes down to the students. "If the students weren't willing to make the commitment, this program most assuredly would fail," Lanthier said.

The last factor is being accepted and supported by the community. Palmer has helped provide a safe environment in which the students could learn. Most other Job Corps facilities are located in areas that are a high risk for teen drug and alcohol abuse and teen violence. "Students at other centers have a hard time because they are too busy putting so much energy into surviving that they can't concentrate on learning," Lanthier said. "If a student is safe, they'll learn."

"Some centers are like prisons. They have huge fences and bars on the windows, not because the students are a threat to themselves or others, but because the environment these centers are located in is such a threat to the students," Lanthier said "I knew Alaska's statistics, but I didn't want that to deter anyone from Alaska's success. There are great advantages to go along with the disadvantages." The best thing going for the Alaska Center was the location chosen for it in Palmer, he said.

"It is close enough to Anchorage to still have the urban services, and it is far enough away to avoid the urban problems," Lanthier said. The first students didn't realize they were walking on to a campus of a program assumed to fail by others in Job Corps at the time it was being created, he said. All these students knew was that they were walking onto an opportunity to help create their futures by how much effort they put in to gain so much.

There are many misconceptions about what Alaska Job Corps is. Lanthier spends countless hours educating the public, "We are constantly telling misinformed people that we are not a correctional rehabilitation center nor are we a drug and alcohol rehab clinic. We are a vocational training program to help poverty youth get out of poverty."