By Natalie Anderson
natalie.anderson@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — Rowan-Cabarrus Community College will offer logistics operations courses in April in an effort to train locals for careers at companies like Chewy, Snow Joe, Food Lion, Aldi and Dillard’s.

Participants in the new course will gain a Certified Logistics Technician designation after undergoing curriculum involving transportation, warehouse operations, material handling, packaging and overall logistics designs and strategy. A range of 16-20 students will be accepted for the course.

The first classes in the program will begin on April 27. They will last until May 21 and take place 9 a.m. to noon, Monday through Thursday. Craig Lamb, vice president for corporate and continuing education at RCCC, said full scholarships are being awarded to Rowan County residents. In an effort to encourage locals to apply, he added that there is “plenty of money to be able to help people” with the opportunity.

Additionally, scholarships are available for residents who don’t live in Rowan County, though the applications for those are less “clear cut,” Lamb said.

This is the first time the course is being offered, but Lamb said he expects the course to be offered every six weeks.

The program is funded from the Better Jobs for Better Lives initiative, to which the Rowan County Board of Commissioners invested $100,000 in January to enable the community college to take its Refocus, Retrain, Re-employ program on the road. Thirty percent of the budget is going directly to scholarships to provide services free of charge.

Rowan County Commissioners Vice Chair Jim Greene said the board is “pleased with progress” of these programs.

“What we’re looking for is to put people to work,” he said. “We think it’s been an excellent return on investment.”

During the program, Lamb said students will interact with local business leaders and take field trips to various companies to learn about how they operate.

“At the end, they’ll be in a position to be ready to work for one of those firms,” Lamb said.

He added that Chewy has agreed to interview everyone who completes the course.

Lamb said the area has become a “distribution center hub,” citing Chewy’s under construction distribution center in Salisbury as an example. He said training programs like the logistics class provide a career for people rather than just a job. He said that before such programs, there had “never really been a clear pathway for people to take for those jobs.”

Though students can be accepted up until one week before the start of the course, Lamb said RCCC will begin processing scholarship paperwork on Monday, when the college comes back from its current spring break.

He added that “the people who have the best chance are the people that prepare for it.”

To register, or for more information, contact Donna Ludwig at donna.ludwig@rccc.edu or 704-216-3668.

Contact reporter Natalie Anderson at 704-797-4246.