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Getting Started

Whether you want to earn a degree, improve your skills, get certified, train for a new career, or explore a new hobby, you can choose from many programs and courses.

Get Started
What type of student are you? New Student Returning Transfer Visiting International College Credit Plus Non-Credit All Student Types

Classes & Programs

Explore your interests and find a program that puts you on the path to a bright future. Tri-C offers both credit and non-credit courses as well as certificate programs in most career fields.

View all

Degree Programs & Certificates

More than 1,000 credit courses are offered each semester in more than 200 career and technical programs. Tri-C also grants short-term certificates, certificates of proficiency and post-degree professional certificates.

View A-Z Program List

Workforce Training & Professional Development

Tri-C's Workforce Training provides both non-credit and credit training for individuals and businesses to assist individuals with skills leading to employment. Tri-C's Corporate College provides professional development and corporate training opportunities.

Learn more

Community Programming for Adults & Youth

Tri-C offers a variety of affordable and convenient community programs for both adults and youth. These programs are designed to promote individual development.

Learn more
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  • Agustin Torres

Agustin Torres

Agustin Torres traveled a long road to discover what really matters in life.

The native of Veracruz, Mexico, graduated from Tri-C with an Associate of Arts degree and continues his education at Case Western Reserve University. It’s a long way from the future Torres envisioned when he moved to the U.S. more than 20 years ago.

In 1996, he was a bartender at the Hard Rock Café in Cancun when the company transferred him to its Cleveland location. He planned to take full advantage of the opportunity. “I came to Cleveland, I worked to save money, and I was going to start my own bar and restaurant,” Torres said. “I had a vision of what success looked like — defined by material wealth — and that’s what I wanted.”

He found co-owners willing to help finance his ambitions and by 2008 was operating a pair of restaurants in Lake County. It was the quintessential immigrant success story: come to America with little more than a dream and build a business from the bottom up.

But there was trouble behind the scenes. “Long story short, I ended up in jail for a day, and I lost just about everything — including my car.” Torres said. He had a bicycle, though, so that’s how Torres started his long journey back.

“My probation officer told me that Cuyahoga Community College had a GED program,” he said. “I never graduated from high school in Mexico, and I decided then that education would be the key to turning my life around.”

Torres spent much of 2010 and 2011 pedaling though the streets of Lakewood to get to class. Released from probation upon completion of his GED, he enrolled full time at Tri-C, where he discovered a new passion: helping others who need a second chance.

He was honored to be selected as a Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Scholar in 2017. “Tri-C opened up a new world for me,” he said. “I’ve grown as a person in ways I never imagined.”

Financial gifts to the Tri-C Foundation provide support to students like Agustin, who are seeking a new path.

How to reach us

Office of Resource Development & Tri-C Foundation
216-987-4868 
foundation@tri-c.edu   
700 Carnegie Avenue 
Cleveland, Ohio 44115

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700 Carnegie Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio 44115

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