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WCC joins Technician Education Program

30 August 2007 — Wayne Community College has joined forces with a South Carolina community college program to try new teaching approaches that will help its engineering students succeed and combat a nationwide shortage of highly skilled technicians.

WCC was invited by the South Carolina Advanced Technological Education (SC ATE) Center of Excellence, which is headquartered at Florence-Darlington Technical College in Florence, S.C., to participate in its National Resource Center for Expanding Excellence in Technician Education. The program assists technical faculty at two-year colleges with improving student learning, retention and job placement by incorporating the Center’s best practices into their programs.

WCC is an “implementation site partner” with SC ATE in this new program, which is funded by a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation for four years.

The SC ATE curriculum model that WCC has implemented integrates science, English, math and communications into technician education. It introduces students to working in teams and revolves around solving typical industry problems as part of their classwork.

WCC instructors have formed “learning communities” that allow engineering students to take their courses together, with certain general education classes reserved for their major, and the instructors in those courses make the lessons applicable to other subjects.

The result is that new math skills correspond to science principles and English assignments apply to their engineering studies, explained WCC project coordinator and engineering instructor Becky Taylor. Instructors also incorporate real world problems into lessons and assign multi-disciplinary assignments.

 “It makes it easier for students to understand why they have to take a bunch of subjects beyond just technical courses,” Ms. Taylor said. “It clicks and they know why they have to take math or how they will use the English they are learning in a future job.”

According to Elaine Craft, director of the SC ATE Center of Excellence, this style of teaching and learning “answers the question, ‘Why am I learning this?’ every day.”

The project also connects two-year college engineering technology instructors across the country with the ATE curriculum model’s “best practices” for increasing recruitment, diversity and retention of students. One of the tools for doing that is a new Website, www.TeachingTechnicians.org that was also funded by the National Science Foundation grant.  The site offers an interactive clearinghouse to connect technician educators to the best professional development opportunities available nationwide.

Well-prepared teachers increase the number of technician graduates and contribute to the number of highly skilled technicians going into the workforce, according to Craft. The new Website points faculty members to opportunities to keep current on the latest technologies and effective teaching methods, such as the one being implemented at Wayne Community College.

The new program builds on the SC ATE’s previous achievements in improving the academic and professional successes of both engineering technology students and faculty members.

For more information on the SC ATE National Resource Center for Expanding Excellence in Technician Training program, contact Ms. Craft at (843) 661-8545 or Ms. Taylor at (919) 735-5151, ext. 356.

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