With the advice and recommendations of its Business Advisory Council, the Convergence Technology Center determined the knowledge and skills required by technicians who work with systems that combine voice, video, data, and images over one secure network. The Center forecasted the hiring needs of regional and local industry and created awareness of the career opportunities and developed curriculum to educate over 400 faculty and 2000 students. The Center began to mentor other community colleges developing convergence technology programs. The Center now extends its work to reach 18 other community colleges. The new activities include recruiting and retaining especially Hispanic students presently underrepresented in the technology workforce. The curriculum and professional development is expanded to include Green information technology especially as it relates to decreasing the energy consumption of technology. The evaluation conducted by an external evaluator investigates the effectiveness of the curriculum, including hybrid courses, the impact of the professional development, the increase in the minority students in the program, and the changes in the mentored colleges.
(CTC) accomplished its goals of: improving IT infrastructure programs to meet the needs of businesses hiring students out of a two-year community college, preparing faculty to teach updates and new technology courses through low-cost and in-depth workshops, recruiting underserved students into the convergence technology field and disseminating the convergence technology program through a network of colleges, serving as both a mentoring program and a community of practice. The CTC advanced knowledge and education in the convergence space by incorporating emerging technologies such as unified communications, virtualization and Green IT into new and updated curriculum through a feedback process with its business partners -- the Business and Industry Leadership Team. These business representatives provided information on knowledge, skills and abilities they need for new employees. These skills were then mapped against existing course outcomes, and gaps were identified. From these gaps, Voice over IP, Wireless, Convergence and Digital Home Technology Integration courses were developed and updated. The CTC developed the Mentored College program in a prior grant to disseminate the work of the center in meeting the unique needs of businesses and students in those colleges' service areas. This program evolved into the Convergence College Network (CCN) which began as a small network of mentored colleges - 10 colleges in six states - and grew to 36 colleges in 15 states by the end of the grant. Scaling techniques were used to grow the CCN, whose members implement convergence programs on their own campuses by instituting a strong business and industry leadership team, conducting a job skills analysis, recruiting students and attending professional development workshops to upgrade their knowledge and skills. Mature members of the CCN now assist other colleges in growing their programs, and they share curriculum and resources. Proof of success of convergence programs at these colleges is reflected in the increased numbers of students enrolled and graduates in the programs. The number of students enrolled in these programs in 2009 was 5,091 (n colleges = 6), and in 2013 the enrollments numbered 35,196 (n=24), an increase of seven times the original number, with only a four-fold increase in the number of colleges. Students graduating from the program numbered 65 in 2009, and this number increased to 2,156 in 2013 -- a 33-fold increase. A key to the success of the CCN initiative was a yearly intensive professional development event -- Working Connections IT Faculty Development Institute. Working Connections was open to all IT community college faculty, but the CCN faculty made up roughly a third of the participants. Attendees engaged in a week-long Working Connections event in the summer or a two-and-a-half day institute in the winter, focusing exclusively on one track of study, preparing them to teach in subsequent semesters. Participants have created new courses and updated existing courses as a result of this professional development. During this grant period, five summer and four winter events were held, focusing on 45 various tracks ranging from virtualization to ethical hacking to Linux, with 647 enrollments. Longitudinal surveys taken yearly after these events showed that over 29,000 students have been taught by instructor attendees in 1,027 classes (from Working Connections 2009-2013). This training also resulted in 92 new degrees and certificates being created at the colleges represented by these faculty members. A focus was placed on recruiting Hispanic students, and the lead underserved partner college, El Centro of the Dallas County Community College District, increased its Hispanic enrollment in convergence classes from 144 in 2009 to 290 in 2012 -- an increase of over 100 percent. The college focused on marketing to this underrepresented group, which is reflected in the higher enrollments. Convergence Technology is based on the intersection of Information Technology and Communications Technology. While the goals of this grant were clearly achieved, there is continual work to be done due to the changing nature of this converged industry.
