Business

The College of Engineering at Tennessee Technological University recently honored  Aleisa Cummins Bloom as the 2012 Technologist of Distinction.

Bloom, of Kingston, is a graduate of Tennessee Tech. She was honored during this year’s Engineers Week at the Cooke-ville-based university.

Bloom is a group leader for sustainability and technology deployment at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Environmental Sciences Division.

U.S. Department of Energy cleanup contractor Safety and Ecology Corp. recently removed four structures as part of the Building 3026 C/D Hot Cells Project.

The structures, which once processed radioisotopes, have been a safety concern for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory since the building’s outer structure was removed in 2010.

Statistics released late last week indicate that Roane County’s employment situation continues to look better.

The Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development reports the county’s March unemployment rate at 7.5 percent, a decrease of 0.3 percent.

That means 25,620 workers in the county’s 27,700 labor force were employed last month.

Those numbers are also better than the same period last year, when Roane County recorded a jobless rate at 7.9 percent.

Roane State Community College’s new Advanced Composites Employment accelerator is more than a training program.

The grant-funded program also teaches companies, including small businesses, how they can utilize breakthroughs in the composites industry to grow and create jobs.

“It’s an economic development opportunity with a training component to it,” ACE director Mike Farmer said during the recent kickoff meeting for the program at Tech 20/20. “That’s the purpose of what we are doing.”