LCCC president excited about his school's Career & Technology Academy
Times LeaderOctober4, 2025 By Sam Zavada
John Yudichak, the president of Luzerne County Community College (LCCC), said he is excited about the potential of his school's Career & Technology Academy.*
It's a partnership between LCCC and Luzerne County's three technical high schools -- Hazleton Area Career Center, the Wilkes-Barre Area Career & Technical Center and West Side Career & Technology Center.
Those three high schools represent a base of about 2000 students. That number is not insignificant, as skilled trades are the future of Luzerne County's workforce, according to Yudichak. And they're joining that workforce just in time.
"The skilled trades are in great demand in Pennsylvania," Yudichak said. "They project that by 2030, we will have a shortage of over 300,000 skilled trade workers in Pennsylvania."
According to Yudichak, the rise of data centers in Northeast Pennsylvania will help create the pipeline between high school students at the Career & Technology Academy and the workforce.
The program at LCCC launched in the Spring 2025 semester with 27 high school students earning college credits while still enrolled at their high school and technical school. In the Fall 2025 semester, 37 students are earning those credits, and Yudichak predicts that the number of participants will continue to climb.
LCCC received $1 million from the Shapiro administration to help build the program. That funding, combined with two robust scholarships -- including one created by Yudichak himself --will make the program free for students for years.
In starting the Career & Technology Academy program, the LCCC community is hopeful that they can close the cultural divide between traditional college students and the skilled trade workers of tomorrow.
"You had a period of time in the United States and here in Pennsylvania where the mantra was the only pathway to a good life was by becoming a college graduate, and the skilled trades were less represented when it came to career night, when it came to an academic pathway," Yudichak said. "But we want to dispel that myth, and we want to make sure that a door that was closed to those 2000 students at those career and technical high school students for decades ? where they didn't have a pathway to a college degree or a postsecondary credential ? that door's been open wide by Luzerne County Community College."
Among the skills that can be learned at the Career & Technology Academy are welding, plumbing, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC).
Business leaders in the area have expressed "pure excitement" to Yudichak in relation to the new program. The course teachers, meanwhile, are skilled trade workers themselves.
"[Students] are going to come to their campus, get their hands dirty, be taught by some of the best professors that we have on campus that have been doing this a long time, and get that head start," Yudichak said.
The credentials earned by students who participate in the program will increase their earning potential, Yudichak said, and the school is committed to recognizing the talents in each of the Career & Technology Academy's students.
"A student graduating from Nanticoke High School on Koscziusko Street can now go down Kosciuszko Street and get a pretty decent job coming right out of high school, maybe making $22, $23, $24 an hour," Yudichak said. "Not a bad wage for an 18-year-old."