Oct. 5 -- A scholarship allowing low-income Rogers County students to receive free workforce training has been recognized internationally.
Claremore Economic Development's Rogers County Technical Training Program received a Gold Award from the International Economic Development Council. This is the highest honor the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit bestows on its members.
Meggie Froman-Knight, executive director of Claremore Economic Development, said the international council sets the world standard for economic development initiatives.
"We operate in a global marketplace as a world," Froman-Knight said. "Claremore is very similar in that way because most of our companies, particularly manufacturing, are global companies. Knowing that we are competing in a high-quality manner and being recognized as that across the world is significant. It's kind of that official endorsement stamp."
Claremore Economic Development previously won a Gold Award for its work in small business development.
The technical training program launched in 2023. A little over 150 people have received a collective $275,750, which completely covers' students registration and tuition fees.
Most recipients have used the funds to take classes in health care (63%) and manufacturing (36%). Recipients train to be nursing assistants, paraprofessionals, welders, phlebotomists, lineworkers, truckers and more.
"We focus primarily on the strongest demand factors," Froman-Knight said. "We saw the employer demand, but Northeast Tech and Rogers State [University] also helped quantify ... what [they] have student demand for, but don't have the fiscal capacity to get them in the classroom. It was ... both from the private sector and the training providers."
All recipients have pursued classes at Northeast Tech or Rogers State University, with nearly all attending Northeast Tech's Claremore campus.
Liberty Shere, the campus' director, said professor Sara Edwards has led the charge on Northeast Tech's side of the scholarship.
Shere said a number of scholarship recipients have told her they wouldn't have been able to take classes without the scholarship.
"They balk at how much it costs, and we let them know ... you can also apply for this," Shere said. "It was a super easy scholarship process, and so it made it really simple for them to do that and to get the training."
Froman-Knight said her organization funded the program through state Community Development Block Grants. The Oklahoma Department of Commerce granted these funds to Claremore and Rogers County, which administer it and dole it out to organizations such as Claremore Economic Development.
But the city and county have expended all the money the commerce department granted them for the scholarship. Froman-Knight said the only way the scholarship can get more money from the state is if another city or county doesn't use all their CDBG funds and relinquishes them to the state.
Given that, people who express interest in the scholarship for now will be added to a "needs list." If more funding comes available, she said people on the needs list will be the first to know.
Interested parties can visit morestartshere.com/rocoworks to join the needs list.
"We can only award what we have money for, obviously," Froman-Knight said.
Froman-Knight said her organization is now aiming to find a permanent funding source for the scholarship. She's looking for private companies to help bankroll it by demonstrating how the program will help their companies attract more skilled workers.
Shere said she'd support the scholarship going permanent.
"Any more tools we can put in the toolkit to be able to offer [students] ways to take the training, we're going to be 100% behind that because it just creates a win-win," Shere said. "Our classes are full, and they're getting the training. That's what our vision is: to prepare them for careers."
Froman-Knight said as part of the scholarship program, Claremore Economic Development is keeping up with recipients after training for a time period roughly equal to the length of their training.
She said it will be a couple of years before her organization can collect concrete data on how the program has benefited Rogers County.
She said what her organization hopes to find is that more Rogers County residents choose to work in Rogers County instead of commuting to Tulsa. She also hopes to boost workers' upward mobility.
"We have a lot of [scholarship recipients] that are working at somewhere that's an entry-level retail or grocery store kind of position," Froman-Knight said. "Ideally, they're then elevating because they got additional education into more of a formal career track where they can grow ... the impact to their household through that career track."