Updated March 1, 2023

Healthcare is a field that never goes out of style. With the rise in chronic illnesses and an aging population, the demand for healthcare professionals is only growing. Working as a pharmacy technician is an accessible and quick entry point into a fulfilling healthcare career. 

With flexible hours, a solid salary, and the opportunity to help others, being a pharmacy technician is a wonderful way to help people while securing your financial well-being. Here, we cover the ins and outs of what a pharmacy technician does to help you determine if it's the right career path for you.

Do you ever find yourself in the kitchen without knowing why you came in there? No, not you. Whatever it was, it must have been important, for here you are. Maybe if you go back out into the living room, you’ll magically remember why you traipsed to the kitchen. Or, just maybe, some herbal medicine can jog that aging memory. 

Teachers have been improving how they differentiate students' abilities for many decades. Most teachers now recognize that different students have different strengths and benefit from different approaches and perspectives on learning. Teachers take professional development coursework to continue learning how other educators implement differentiation in their classrooms, helping more students have positive outcomes from the schooling process.

Let's look at what equitable grading is and what it can contribute to efforts to improve equity and inclusion in the classroom.

Ashleigh Atwood owns Maid in Portland, a local eco-friendly residential and commercial cleaning service in Portland, Oregon. After being in business for 15 years, Ashleigh enrolled in the 2022 Advanced Small Business Management training program provided by the PCC Small Business Development Center. During her time in the program, Ashleigh has found a renewed sense of passion for her business, while expanding her team and increasing her revenue by 10%!

There's a misconception that getting into healthcare as a career takes many time-consuming years of study. Many people begin their healthcare careers with a rapid training course that moves them into an entry-level job. People develop their expertise from entry-level careers in phlebotomy or other areas of healthcare. Others work full-time while taking evening coursework to move into different healthcare roles.

Unlike going to school full-time for years, this method of incrementally advancing through the healthcare field provides an income while studying. It can still help you move into your ideal healthcare role eventually. Let's look at how to become a phlebotomist Portland desperately needs and why this role is well-suited to growing a healthcare career of various kinds.

One of the top careers in real estate that people think of quickly is that of agents who are selling or buying homes. While there are good ways to learn how to become a real estate agent, Portland offers way more opportunities than agent work. Real estate is a booming business with various ways to join this popular career path, often without spending many years in school or going into extensive student loan debt.

Here are some of the common careers you can consider.

Linda Keppinger, a Portland-based artist and photographer, founded KeppingerCreative in January 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic began. Linda participated in Business Builders, a 10-week PCC SBDC training program, in 2020 and continues to seek guidance from her expert business advisors. Now, KeppingerCreative has quadrupled its revenue in just one year by selling its line of art-based paper products into specialty retail stores nationwide! This is Linda's story. 

It's easy to start a classroom teaching experience by looking around your room (or virtual "room" in an online class, as it might be) and asking what items would help people learn best in this environment. That is an excellent first thought because it means you don't want to approach teaching casually that doesn't put students on the track to success. However, in modern education, the goal is to go a step further, beyond what would work well for you to what would work well for as many students as possible.

Learning to create inclusive college classroom environments helps you see more students succeed, especially first-generation college students. Doing so also enables you to improve diversity and inclusion in the college classroom and empower everyone to share their experiences and viewpoints. To do so, however, there may be some needed mindset shifts that help you create an inclusive classroom.

When Kim Boyd recognized the impacts of isolation our community was facing due to the COVID pandemic, she decided to help reconnect individuals with themselves and their communities through Art, Wonder, Exploration and Story labs that provide inclusive, accessible spaces for artful play and story building. Kim came to the PCC Small Business Development Center for help turning her idea into a fully functioning business, and took advantage of structured businesses courses and no-cost, one-on-one business advising. Now, studioAWEsome has reached almost 200 Oregonians in just two months, with strategic plans for future growth. 

Dental offices may have a dentist's name on the door, but usually, it takes more than just the dentist to handle the tasks that keep the business afloat. Instead, various workers, such as dental assistants, handle tasks from the moment the patients walk through the door till the practice closes for the day and prepares for the next day.

Dental assistant work is in very high demand right now. The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists the field's growth rate at 11%, making it a high-demand career in Portland. Becoming a dental assistant is a rewarding and varied career, offering the chance to see the inner workings of a healthcare practice if you have a goal of continuing with your education to participate in some other aspect of the field.  If you speak to any dentist who's gone through a hiring shortage, they'll tell you exactly the value of dental assistants. Offices run on the labor of these workers!