For the unemployed, sometimes honing skills can help make you more marketable. Workforce Development, Inc. and Riverland Community College are seeking to provide those opportunities by offering training in three career fields this summer.

Registration is underway for Transportation Academy, a new program, in addition to health care and alternative energy academies.

Marge Kuethe, youth programs coordinator for Workforce Development in Albert Lea, said the academies provide “smaller-scale training levels” targeting students who may have little post-high school education.

The Transportation Academy, for example, offers beginning training in diesel, automotive and truck driving, giving students a taste of possible future careers.

“It really is a transportation ‘smorgasbord’ for young people to get in there, meet the instructors, figure out what would be required of them,” Kuethe explained. “This is an opportunity for them to get exceptional occupational training or learning in an environment that is very interesting to them, and hopefully to determine whether or not this would be a good career match.”

Previous academies, including manufacturing, have proven successful, but Kuethe said Workforce wants to provide training in careers where students can currently get jobs; the automotive industry is still hiring, she explained. Workforce contracts with Riverland to provide instruction.

“A lot of the young people that we work with have real mechanical aptitude,” she said. “There weren’t a lot of programs out there that tapped into them. When there are no jobs is the time to go back to school.”

Workforce Development — located in 10 southeast Minnesota counties — received $1.4 million in federal stimulus funding. Kuethe said their program benefits when the economy is down — the times when people need job skills and training.

“We receive the resources to assist the people impacted by the recession,” she said. “The program is an idea or a dream that was in process, and then the stimulus money came about, it gave us the opportunity to act on the good ideas we’ve been thinking of.”

The Transportation Academy is full-time, five days a week for six weeks, beginning July 13 at Riverland’s Albert Lea campus. The program is nine credits, and scholarships are available.

To register for the transportation, health care or alternative energy academies, call Workforce Development at (507) 379-3409. For more information, visit www.workforcedevelopmentinc.org.