STRATFORD – Mayor David Chess, a longtime internist, officially welcomed Cornerstone Medical Training Center (CMTC) Friday, March 20 to its expanded location at 999 Oronoque Lane.
The Stratford location is the second for the Fairfield-based medical training business co-founded by Peggy Colas, RN, and her husband Shanoy Dixon founded in 2023. It teaches and prepares students for medical jobs in the areas of certified nursing assistant, patient care technician, phlebotomy, EKG, pharmacy technician, medical billing and coding and medical assistant.
“We’re going to operate both the Fairfield site (at 685-689 Kings Highway East) and the new site,” Colas said. “It’s about six times the size. The plan is to have more classes. We have seven programs now.
“Our tiny storefront doesn’t allow us to run them all at the same time. Because it’s on a monthly basis, we have about 30 students. In a year we teach about 100-200 students. The classes range from two to six weeks depending on the specialty.”
CMTC is a postsecondary healthcare training school dedicated to preparing students for immediate entry into the medical workforce through hands-on, career-focused education.
With the addition of the 6,550-square-foot office and training facility complete with two classrooms, Colas hopes to double the size of the number of students to around 400. CMTC signed a five-year lease for the Stratford space.
One of the reasons Colas chose the Oronoque Lane site because of its proximity to Spring Village, an assisted living facility down the hill, she said. Spring Village will be the third health care facility CMTC with which will have an affiliation. The other two are Norwalk Hospital and DaVita Dialysis, which has centers in Fairfield, Bridgeport and Shelton.
Mayor Chess, who has been a local doctor for 43 years and founded PriMed, is looking forward to CMTC’s ability to teach the youth seeking jobs in health care.
“We’re excited to welcome Cornerstone to the town of Stratford,” he said. “Having the capacity to have pathways for children to enter the health care industry and into the helping industry is critical. That’s been absent.”
Having someone with the infrastructure and organizational capacity that Cornerstone is a real addition to our community, he added.
CMTC offers courses, job placement, and a van service to assist students, complementing their Fairfield location.
“We’re looking to start classes at the new location in early April,” Colas said. “We will start with a class in billing and coding.”
