Adams County CTC students sign up for free GRIT workforce program

Juniors and seniors at the Career and Technical Center marked their commitment to the Growing Rural Independence Together program with a signing day that tied classroom learning to an immediate workforce goal: giving Adams County students a path to credentials, college exposure and local jobs before graduation.

GRIT is not a one-day enrichment stop. The summer program runs as a three-week residential experience on the campuses of Shawnee State University and Hocking College, where students live in dormitories, eat on campus and train in a college setting while building career skills. The setup is meant to remove common barriers for rural students, including transportation, housing and cost, and the entire experience is offered at no charge to students or families.

The program is built around credentials that carry weight in the job market. Students can work toward certifications in phlebotomy, OSHA 10 and Canon Cinema, opening routes into health care, workplace safety and technical media production. GRIT also pairs training with internship and job placement opportunities, a design that makes the program part education, part recruitment tool for employers who want to hire local talent and keep young adults from leaving southern Ohio.

The effort has already reached beyond Adams County. GRIT now spans 32 Appalachian counties, and the project’s broader mission is to help students and adults find good-paying jobs in their own communities through career assessment, coaching and local collaboration. On a weekly GRIT Project call April 23, Adams County seniors Logan Caldwell and Nina McCann spoke about their own experiences, after both had already taken part in the Bear Tracks program at Shawnee State University. Shawnee State describes Bear Tracks as a residential summer program for high school juniors and seniors that offers three- or four-week training sessions, industry credentials and a path to a job or internship, with full scholarships available through GRIT.

The 2026 summer GRIT programs are scheduled to run from June 1 through Aug. 15, with short three- to six-week training programs preferred. The budget for the season is up to $500,000, and as many as six training providers or apprenticeships will be selected in the fifth grant cycle for the summer effort.

The push grew out of hard lessons in Adams County. A Just Transition Fund profile says the shutdown of two coal-fired power plants wiped out an estimated 1,131 jobs and cost local governments and schools $8.5 million in lost tax revenue. From that economic hit, and from a 2018 meeting tied to Ohio’s opioid crisis, GRIT evolved into a regional workforce strategy aimed at helping students gain skills and stay connected to the places they call home.