Earlier this month, Senator Sherrod Brown visited Eastern Gateway Community College (EGCC) to meet with faculty and students to learn about their ShaleNet program.  EGCC is currently training their fourth ShaleNet class looking for opportunities in the Utica Shale.   ShaleNet was created as a grant program to give free training to low-wage, unemployed, and dislocated workers for jobs in the shale industry.

Before meeting the students, Senator Brown sat down with local officials and community leaders to discuss shale development in Jefferson County as well as his proposed bill Strengthening Employment Clusters to Organize Regional Success (SECTORS) Act, which would help unemployed workers train for high-tech jobs in their region.  Of course in our region that training would be for shale development.

Working with places like Eastern Gateway that these jobs are local jobs and understanding what you said that they, that the initial round of some of the most difficult highly skilled jobs we don’t know how to do yet in Ohio but we soon will because of places like Eastern Gateway. – Senator Sherrod Brown

During his talks with those in attendance, Senator Brown caught a glimpse of the excitement many of those in Jefferson County have with the new businesses moving in to the area.

So you are going to have, again, companies that are,  they specialize in that kind of thing and they know what the needs of the industry are.  They have been doing it for a hundred years and they know what’s going on.  They are going to be locating their field offices in places where they can do that kind of thing in our area.

With job opportunities on their way to the area, Senator Brown ended his meeting with the local community and elected leaders to learn about ShaleNet from the students.  Senator Brown sat down with the class of ten students to learn a bit more about them and what made them take this opportunity.

Senator Brown found a wide variety of students ranging from a laid off steel worker to retired construction worker looking for something different.  One of the students who spent the past 12 years in education as a teacher from nearby Carroll County, hoped ShaleNet would provide him with the training needed to help him jump start a new career.

Senator Brown took the time to meet with all of the students and offered words of encouragement to all of them in their new careers.  But it wasn’t just the students who were learned something that day at EGCC.  After meeting with the Jefferson County residents as well as the students, Senator Brown learned a bit about the Utica Shale and its promise to eastern Ohio.

Check us out on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube !