Nursing is an excellent example of a field where a general, far-reaching curriculum creates the foundation for the career. However, many nurses choose a role where they rely on a subset of their skills most of the time. Perhaps they are working with patients frequently who need specific procedures done but don't require blood draws or IVs as often.  After all, some healthcare settings have dedicated phlebotomists specializing in blood draws and other similar skills.

However, as a nurse, you may eventually want to move up or move on to a different setting, and knowing what will make you most attractive as a candidate for advancement or a new, in-demand role can be difficult. Nurses can distinguish themselves with phlebotomist certification, such as Portland Community College's phlebotomy technician program.

Hospitals and other clinical care facilities can only operate because they maintain meticulous attention to cleanliness. People expect hospital spaces to be clean to prevent complication risk due to exposure to outside bacteria or viruses.

As a result, healthcare settings employ Sterile Processing Technicians who are very well versed in how to completely, carefully, and quickly sterilize clinical spaces to be ready for use by another patient. For people who are naturally clean and sanitize every surface in their home, this can be a natural fit as a career. It is a rewarding chance to do good with your natural tendency toward cleanliness and an opportunity to enter the healthcare field with only a short training program.

Let's look more in-depth at the role of becoming a Sterile Processing Technician and how a one-term training course can jumpstart a career in the healthcare field.

More and more, people are turning their efforts to engage with the internet from laptop or desktop web browsers to app-based programs on smartphones and tablets. This shift has made what was already an essential app development field into an even more valuable area of focus. People are creating full-time positions and freelance roles with unprecedented flexibility simply by understanding how to design and code for Apple's iOS.

Whether you're an experienced coder in other contexts or new, a Portland Community College course in Apple iOS can help you jumpstart your career and enter new spaces of app development. Here's how to build iPhone apps using this knowledge!

You may imagine a 'career in healthcare' beginning with a decade of schooling and interning with a hospital, plus years in residency. However, there are many different roles within a hospital or clinical setting. It turns out that even for long-term, well-paid work, you can often receive training and certification within a year or two, and phlebotomy is a great example.

Oregon and Washington have recently dealt with shortages of phlebotomists who provide necessary services in almost any clinical setting you can imagine. Studying to become a phlebotomy technician at Portland Community College is a great way to start an entry career in phlebotomy. From there, you can grow your skills and experience and enter your ideal work setting.

Many full-time workers feel like they are at a loss for advancing in their careers when they need their job to make ends meet. The truth is that, even with full-time work, there are ways to move forward by using part-time coursework that aligns with your next career goals.

Managing a class load when pursuing a certificate or degree from Portland Community College is entirely possible. Still, you'll experience your days as less hectic if you do some serious prep before starting the work-plus-school lifestyle. Here is how to balance classes and full-time work because you still want your life to have balance during this busy season! 

Becca Schultz started developing her piano pedagogy while still a student at Portland State University. Since then she has helped hundreds of students learn to play and enjoy music, while simultaneously employing multiple musicians as teachers. Her business has grown so much in the past couple of years that they have recently had to move to a newly renovated location with the help of the PCC Small Business Development Center team.  This is her story...

When businesses invest in training for their personnel, they experience a range of valuable outcomes. First, the fundamental nuts-and-bolts benefits of whatever the training is, is moving employees to a new level of competence and knowledge.

Employees also typically appreciate the presence of valuable training opportunities, as it moves them forward in their careers and poises them for advancement. Finally, employees who share a common training experience also foster connections that they'd lack without the training; inter-office communication can often improve, as can team rapport and collaboration. 

If your team doesn't have a training division, it can be daunting to imagine creating training that is both attuned to what you need and doesn't take up resources required you could use elsewhere. A great compromise that promotes high-quality training without rerouting your on-site team is to find custom training solutions for businesses through Portland Community College.

If you're trying to figure out how to outsource training for my business, you've come to the right place. Training is more needed now than ever, and the benefits you can reap are huge.

While we linger on the difference in earnings between bachelor's degree holders and high school graduates, many people still find themselves in a situation where a four-year, traditional residential bachelor's degree wasn't the right fit after high school. Often, life has carried people to a time when they have to make different calculations than an 18-year-old typically must make when it comes to answering, "Why is college worth the cost?"

While average data can tell us a lot about how education improves outcomes for many people, from access to healthcare to financial stability, it's also essential to think through what you want that education to do for you. If your goals are to progress away from entry-level, less-skilled positions, you need to determine whether a four-year degree will even give you access to those higher-level roles. If you need a particular certificate or credential, that might be much less expensive to obtain while providing a similar result when combined with your prior experience.

Many of the benefits of attending college, things like forming social bonds, may not be your priorities when deciding if college is worth it. Non-traditional students of all kinds can find a valuable way to make post-secondary education work for them.

Here are three ways to make college worth the cost at different stages of life.

Many people envision that college classes are for significant shifts, from being in high school into a career for the first time or from one field into a different field. However, Portland Community College hosts various programs that help trained and educated professionals move to the next level within their fields or expand their job responsibilities. 

A great example is the collaborative work within the Foundations of Clinical Research program. This program is offered once a year, with more limited enrollment. Most medical professionals in this program are already registered nurses or have even higher credentials but are looking into how to participate in research studies or how to get involved in clinical research conducted at their hospitals or other healthcare settings.

Let's dive in and see how this program helps professionals expand their skills and widen their career opportunities, even mid-career! 

Five clients of the PCC Small Business Development Center have been selected as 2022 recipients of the Good Food Award by The Good Food Foundation. These 5 business owners are all graduates of the Getting Your Recipe to Market program that teaches entrepreneurs how to produce, promote and sell their culinary recipes. Here is a list of the 5 winners and their products. Please join us in reaching out and saying "CONGRATULATIONS" to these winners -- and don't forget to look for them in your local grocery and/or farmer's market!