An Interview between Job Quality Fellow Walt Tobin (President, Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College) and Maureen Conway (Vice President, The Aspen Institute; Executive Director, Economic Opportunities Program)

Walt Tobin recently reached a full decade in serving as President of Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College (OCtech). OCtech is a two-year college, and one of 16 in the South Carolina Technical College system. Tobin notes that “we consider ourselves the first step on the road to the American Dream. We are in a rural area straddling the I-26 corridor between Columbia to the North and Charleston to the southeast.” OCtech serves predominately African American and low-income students. The school largely focuses on equipping students for careers in advanced manufacturing and health care, and also offers programs in public service, business criminal justice, and early care and education. Including part-time faculty and staff, OCtech employs about 250.

We recently sat down for a conversation with Walt Tobin, who is also an Aspen Institute EOP Job Quality Fellow, to discuss the college’s efforts to boost job quality and opportunities – particularly for frontline employees.

Maureen Conway: Like many community and technical colleges, Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College is a significant employer in your region in addition to being an important educational institution. In addition to helping your students prepare for and connect to jobs and careers, how have you been thinking about your role as an employer? How can OCtech improve the quality of jobs that you offer?

Walt Tobin: We just adopted a new strategic plan with only two goals that we think are the most important in our institution and community. The first goal is to increase the number of graduates by 20% compared to this current year. Employers are looking for graduates with high levels of technical skill to fill the high-wage, high-demand jobs in manufacturing and health care. We want to provide the quantity and quality of graduates that employers need in our area. The second goal is to improve job quality within, increase wages, and ramp up our payroll costs by $200,000 annually, each year over the next two years.

Read the full article about high-quality apprenticeships from The Aspen Institute.