By Robert Hudson

The Selma Times-Journal

A local community college has received a grant that aims to help the school develop the nation’s workforce.

Wallace Community College-Selma has received a $9.5 million shared grant for the purpose of job training.

The grant will be shared in consortium with Wallace Community College-Hanceville, Central Alabama Community College and the University of Alabama, Birmingham.

“Basically, the grant is a trade adjustment assistance grant for career training,” said Johnny Moss, director of marketing and college relations for Wallace Community College-Selma.

“The priorities are to accelerate progress for low-skilled workers and also improve retention and achievement rates.”

Moss said the hope is the grant will help Wallace enroll and retain the impacted workers and non-traditional students in hopes to generate industry growth in the area.

“We want to be able to serve the population including dislocated workers, underemployed and unemployed workers and also veterans,” Moss said.

Moss said the grant is great for Wallace Community College-Selma because it furthers the school’s commitment to developing the workforce.

“It’s just great,” Moss said. “We pride ourselves in workforce development, and training and technical education. To be able to not only partner with key community colleges in our state, but to continue to provide the commitment to developing our workforce development training for another 3-5 years is great.”

Wallace Community College-Selma is just one of many community colleges across the nation receiving grant money for job training and workforce development.

The grant received by Wallace is a part of  $500 million awarded by the Obama administration to community colleges for job training and workforce development.

The grants are aimed to support partnerships between community colleges and employers and to create programs that help workers get good jobs.