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Jobs
Madonna gives a boost to those changing careers
by Robert Delaney of The Michigan Catholic
Published February 5, 2010
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Photo courtesy of Madonna University
Students register for the medical billing and coding class and pharmacy tech class at Madonna University. |
DETROIT — With Michigan leading the nation in unemployment statistics, Livonia-based Madonna University continues to adapt its academic offerings to help Michiganians prepare for the jobs of the future.
As many of southeast Michigan's traditional jobs have dried up, Madonna has targeted the fields where employment is rising, offering new programs so students can earn the degrees or other forms of certification to qualify for those positions.
Its latest innovation is a new Web site, launched Jan. 26 to help job-seekers, whether or not they are Madonna students.
Thanks to a grant from the Ford Motor Company Fund, the new Web site — www.JobCHEER.org — " brings together all of the disparate services we offer on campus for a displaced worker or unemployed individual," said Ernest Nolan, Ph.D., the Livonia-based university's provost and vice president for academic administration.
JobCHEER, which is short for Job Clearing House for Education and Employment Resources, can be accessed from any computer, but job seekers can also come into the JobCHEER office on campus.
Madonna offers programs in more than 75 undergraduate and 27 graduate areas, leading to certificates; associate, bachelor's and master's degrees; post-baccalaureate certificates.
Besides information about its own programs, the site has links to a number of other sites that offer information, including listings of job openings in various fields. Free career workshops will also be offered to help job seekers hone their resume-writing skills or improve their job-search strategies.
Nolan said one of the advantages of the site is that those who use it will not only be able to see what kinds of jobs are out there, but also learn what those jobs require in the way of degrees or other credentials.
Two years ago, Madonna launched its Hot Jobs Project, creating subcommittees of faculty and staff to study various career fields and report on the current trends in those fields. "We wanted to see where the jobs are going to be in the next five to 10 years," Nolan explained.
Their analyses were then used to evaluate both how Madonna's existing academic offerings served students preparing for careers in those fields and how the university could improve its programs.
Michigan's recent rise as a center for television and movie production, for example, gave rise to the university's broadcast and cinematography program housed in the university's new science and media building, which includes a broadcast and video production studio.
"We focused our attention on post-production, editing and animation," he said, adding that this involved collaborations between the university's media, music and computer faculty, "where all those technologies converge."
New programs were also added in health-care fields, such as health-care administration, and pharmacy tech and pharmacy assistant programs. And a two-year program prepares students to go on to enter a six-year doctoral program in pharmacy as offered at other institutions, such as Wayne State University.
Madonna has a tradition of offering career-oriented programs, but now its radiology program has expanded to include nuclear imaging and sonography.
They join other career-oriented programs such as nursing, social work, criminal justice and gerontology, plus the traditional liberal arts disciplines.
Madonna has taught sign-language interpretation since the mid-1970s, but now that has been expanded to include state-certification as well as a program for those who would be advocates for the deaf and hearing-impaired.
Founded by the Felician Sisters of Livonia in 1937, Madonna grew from a two-year institution to a four-year college, then added graduate programs to become a full-fledged university.
"We are building on the foundational values of the institution," Nolan said.
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