RIVERTON, WYOMING – Snuggled against the Wind River Mountains, en route to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, the Wind River Job Corps sits in a tourism corridor complete with hotels, restaurants and diverse visitor venues (from fly fishing to rock climbing, powwows to military showcases, with casinos, RV parks and national brand hotels). So it was fitting that WRJC this past year would launch a new Tourism & Hospitality trade program to address the community economic need.

Like all Job Corps vocational training programs, the curriculum is rich and highly detailed in the TARS (training achievement requirements) each student successfully completes to graduate. Our goal, and our challenge, is to communicate that depth and detail to the industry in order to develop work-based learning and job relationships with the business community.

The trade cluster format condenses a many-page TARS document into a easy to read graphic that can be used in an industry conference social networking setting.

In this example, we took the “cluster” approach as this is a comfortable graphic trend used for economic development efforts. In it, the TARS have been abbreviated and grouped to make it easy for business leaders to find the subject matter appropriate to their own situation. They can find the topics of importance and then rest assured students placed with them will be well trained in those specific areas and will be of high quality.

We will unveil the tool at an upcoming CRC meeting where we will introduce the new trade program. Students will stage the meeting room and serve refreshments based on recipes they developed (a competition was held with the chocolate truffle recipe winning the showcase).  With feedback and fine-tuning from this meeting, we will prepare for the Wyoming Governor’s Conference on Tourism in late February.