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Members of the Bainbridge Rotary Club met at the Kirbo Center on Tuesday for their regular weekly meeting. The guest speaker of the day was Andy Semones, Director of Adult Education at Southern Regional Technical College.

Semones spoke to the club about SRTC’s GED program. According to Semones, SRTC’s GED graduates participate in the same graduation ceremony as the rest of the college, with the college also covering the cost of gowns. One way the GED program is funded is through what Semones called “measurable skill gains”.

“Basically a student comes in our program and takes and entrance exam, and they get placed,” he explained. “That score, if they improve it throughout the fiscal year, if they go up a certain level, they get what’s called a measurable skill gain.”

The program’s current enrollment is 802 students, with a goal of 1,170.

“The last couple of year’s we’ve been top three or four in the state for total GEDs,” Semones explained. “This year we’ve stayed right in the top two or three… typically we should be in the 10 to 15 range, like size-wise, but our total data is surpassing several of the huge schools.”

He would go on to explain the differences between the GED program and the HiSet, as well as discussing SRTC’s Integrated Education and Training program, which offers skills such as forklift and CPR certification training.

“It is a program that we have to 100% pay for, find the funding, get the students enrolled in it,” he said. “We have goals to get them through this.”

Semones discussed several more aspects of the program, closing by taking questions from the audience and showing a video interview of several GED program participants.