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Educating Educators

Community college and high school teachers were challenged during a week-long, intensive workshop that gave them insight into working behavior styles and project management in engineering.  The "Engineering Challenge" program offers a similar after school program for high school and community college students. 

     

Educators Learn Through Workplace Experiences

 

Teachers and Company Leaders Learn from Each Other

Creating a new dimension for pergolas furniture is John Hoyle, drafting teacher at Cheney Tech, who helped Baldwin Pergolas Furniture this summer develop a 3-dimensional online program that shows users how to build a pergolas. Seated at left is Max Baldwin, President of Baldwin Furniture. John Hoyle is seated right.

The Regional Center for Next Generation Manufacturing (RCNGM) is dedicated to helping educators prepare the workforce of the future by not only giving them relevant and current curriculum programs, but by giving them exposure to industry practices that they might not otherwise have.

The Center has developed a teacher externship program that brings both high school, technical high school and community college faculty into the workplace for four-weeks in the summer. Following their externship experience, teachers develop a work-based learning project for their students.

Preparing the next generation of workers to meet the expectations of a highly technological workforce can be a challenge to educators. Often, the demands of teaching within a set curriculum prevent educators from broadening their students' knowledge of workplace requirements because they, themselves, are unfamiliar with those expectations. By exposing educators to business environments - whether it be through teacher externships, company visits, visiting lecturers, or collaborative work-based projects in the classroom - educators are given the opportunity to infuse some excitement into their classes. Educators who participate in these kinds of professional development programs have an opportunity to not only engage their students in more active learning experiences, but to become part of those experiences themselves.

For more information about these programs, contact Mary deManbey, Program Manager, CBIA, (860)-244-1900, email Mary.demanbey@cbia.com

 

 


The Regional Center for Next Generation Manufacturing is funded through a grant from the National Science Foundation Advanced Technology Education program. Copyright 2005. All rights reserved.