From Classroom to Casino, Students Hitting the Jackpot

Looking for a job? How about going to school to work at a casino?

Looking for a job? How about going to school to work at a casino?

It's a fairly new concept and South Florida has the only school in the southeast offering slot machine training. At Sheridan Tech, hard working students are transitioning from the classroom to the casino.
 
Lisa Birchfield took a gamble.
 
"I needed a job," she said.
 
Birchfield's glad she did. She enrolled in Sheridan Tech's 9-week gaming repair program, graduated and applied at area casinos. After a few months on the job at Mardi Gras, she's now a supervisor.
 
She believes a lot of it has to do with the certification she received before starting the job. It's the kind of success story Sheridan envisioned when starting the program in 2008.
 
"There's always a demand for people that know what they're doing," the instructor explained.
 
It's a lot more than fun and games. There's a lengthy textbook for the course. A lot of what the students are learning revolves around engineering, like reconstructing the handle on a slot machine. It has some 50 parts.
 
"When there's a failure, they have to know where to go," the instructor added.
 
It means a lot of studying and note taking.
 
"You can't just look at the screen and know what you're doing no," insisted student Andrew Lemke.
 
He moved to South Florida from Minnesota to take the course.
 
"This is what I wanted to do, and there isn't really any other classes that offer this anywhere else," he said.
 
So with some hands-on learning, they plan to hit the jackpot that will lead to jobs.
 
The instructor said gaming repair can be lucrative. An attendant at an area casino might start out making $10 to $13 an hour, but if he sticks with it, there are opportunities to move up into management hitting $50,000 to even six figures.


Follow Brent Solomon on Twitter @solomonreports.

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