In an open house last week, the Lyndon B. Johnson Job Corps students showed off the projects they have been working on, talked about their respective programs, and demonstrated the skills they’ve gained.
The open house on Friday, Sept. 26, featured tours of the Job Corps campus and booths showcasing the Corps’ six vocational options. Lunch was provided as a demonstration of the Culinary Arts program.
Macon County’s center, ranked number two of 24 corps locations managed through the U.S. Forest Service and number 15 of the total 123 centers nationwide, currently has 65 students out of a capacity of 120 students, according to liaison specialist Keith Bowers. Each of the students is enrolled in one of the center’s vocational options: brick masonry, welding, facilities maintenance, paint, office administration and business technology, and culinary arts. Students are housed in dormitories on campus and can earn high school degrees and driver’s licenses. Students receive a basic stipend that increases as their training progresses.
Bowers said vocations are selected and changed depending on the needs and interests of the communities in which the centers are located, and if a student wishes to train in a vocation not offered through their local center, they can be directed to centers nationwide to find their chosen opportunity.
Lillian Boquin, a maintenance student who has been in the program for three months, said maintenance is the most versatile vocation because of how it works with other vocations.
“Sometimes we team up with welding and learn how to do different welds. We also do plumbing, electrical work as well as carpentry,” Boquin said. “And we just kind of dabble in a little bit of everything. We switch around constantly and every day’s a new day … we have the widest variety of tools out of every place here. We use everything in the toolbox, from Phillips heads, to hedge trimmers to leaf blowers. Our goal is to make everything look pretty. We look at the fine detail and we try and ensure that it looks good because we want people to be able to look at this place and see the beauty in it.”
Maintenance workers have also participated in community projects, including helping a church reorganize for fundraisers and putting up fencing at a county school. What the maintenance program will be doing in the coming winter will depend on the weather.
“If it snows, we’re going to be shoveling snow, making sure everything’s cleared out and people don’t have to slip on ice,” Boquin said. “Our top priority is also safety. We want to make sure it’s safe for people to live around here … we’ve got to make sure everything stays safe so no one gets hurt, and if someone does get hurt, we know what to do.”
Jabari Smith said his nine months training in painting has helped to build vital skills for starting in a reliable union trade. He helped with painting the eagle statue at the Veterans Memorial Park at the Macon County Community Building and several projects on campus, like painting railing and stairwells. He has picked up skills like installing and painting drywall but is still waiting to use some of the more advanced tools of the trade, like paint sprayers.
“I don’t know if you’ve got kids or not, but if you do, painting is a good program,” Smith said. “It’s a really good trade. You learn a lot from it.”
Alejandro Martinez has been with the masonry program since December 2024, and has since laid brick in several projects around campus.
“I’ve learned how to do concrete finishing. I’ve learned how to lay tile, lay brick … I’ve learned different types of brick masonry material and how to identify what tools and what type of PPE to use, and different safety regulations,” he said. “We’ve poured concrete on campus, but we’ve also gone off-center to the Franklin skate park, and we built benches and podiums out there.” The benches are concrete slabs built on a brick base.
Martinez showed off a mock arch design to be used for an upcoming campus project, a decorative arch entryway. Once materials come in, the arch will be built with black brick in time for December, according to center leader Paul Wooton.
Student Government Association members Emily Bradham and Sean Blackson shared how their roles help improve student life on campus through planning school trips and improving dorm rooms. Bradham has served in the association between six and seven months, while Blackson has served for six.
“We do things like planning events, what we call recreational trips every week, and that could be going to the movies, that could be going out to the Asheville Mall … recently, we went out to the aquarium,” Bradham said. “We essentially try to make the center better for students and the staff as a whole.”
“We’re currently trying to talk staff members into allowing us to be able to have personal items on our beds, like personal blankets, pillows, stuffed animals. What we do have now is very military,” she said.
“Within the SGA, we have different roles. We have the president, the vice president, the sergeant at arms, the treasurer, the photographer,” Blackson said. Other members include dorm representatives, who keep dorm members updated on what’s going on at campus.
Bradham also reaches out to community organizations to look for volunteer opportunities and create volunteer events for students. Recently, students held a senior celebration to visit with older adults, and coming up will be hosting a haunted house open to the public and participating in the fall festival.
“I have seen the ups and downs of a bunch of different [centers] and they’re all pretty similar when it comes to student life,” Bradham said. “That’s definitely where SGA takes a big part of it as well just to make things a lot more enjoyable – adding Keurigs, coffee makers, vending machines for example. We’ve been able to do that for the students. We ask them what it is they would want to see different here and we try our hardest to make it happen.”
“Job Corps as a whole … there’s a lot of opportunities that you can have. My roommate, he is going to go to an internship when we get back from winter break,” Blackson said. “Right now, I’m taking community college classes and I’m in my first semester.”
“I’m almost halfway right now,” Bradham said. “And I’ve already been offered at least two jobs, and that’s just mainly just from doing volunteer events.”