Northern, LANL agree to education partnership
Northern New Mexico College President Rick Bailey and Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Thomas Mason say a new partnership between their institutions can become a model for how higher education and industry can join forces to train the state’s workforce.
Under a five-year agreement, the college will provide a full-time instructor and associate degrees in radiation protection, while LANL will write the program’s curriculum and offer students on-site internships alongside its radiological control technicians.
The deal gives NNMC students a two-year path from high school to a well-paying career.
“This allows Northern to provide students with a more robust pipeline to employment,” Bailey said Monday. “Imagine being a student who is given an opportunity for a two-year degree with not just a job at the end of it but a career pathway to one of the largest, most stable employers in the state.”
The program will start with 40 students in June. LANL says interns will be paid between $12.50 and $17 per hour depending on their educational attainment. According to a job posting on LANL’s website, an entry-level radiological control technician with an associate degree would earn between $55,400 and $88,000 per year. Employment is not guaranteed upon graduation from the program, but the laboratory is hiring for the position, which is responsible for controlling radiation by cleaning work spaces and preventing the spread of contaminants.
“[Radiological control technician] is an area where there has been a bit of a chronic shortage in terms of availability. The reality is we need to get more people trained,” Mason said Monday. “Because we are such a big factor economically in the region, we have responsibility to work with higher education institutions to create programs that give people from this area the skill set they need to successfully compete for those jobs.”
LANL says the agreement became official following a successful pilot program that has already seen NNMC graduates take positions at the laboratory.
Mason, who took over as director at LANL in November, said he met with higher education leaders from Northern, Santa Fe Community College, University of New Mexico and other institutions during his transition period with partnerships like this one in mind.
Mason said LANL makes about 1,000 hires per year, which are half due to retirement and half due to growth.
“We want to work with Northern to craft that specific workforce that we need,” he said. “I think over time we will be looking at other areas beyond radiological control technicians.”