The Maricopa Community College District (MCCD) is cooperating with four of its member community colleges and the Maricopa Advanced Technical Education Center (MATEC) to work with local industries to keep pace with the changes in industrial needs for technicians. Specific local industries that have committed support to this project are Intel, Avnet and ON Semiconductor. HTWI is: 1. Establishing a unique model program for creating and broadly disseminating reusable skills in areas of emerging technology; 2. Reforming curriculum and delivery to meet industry needs and requirements and to provide students with a relevant, rigorous and interdisciplinary course of study; and 3. Redefining Maricopa Colleges' outreach and retention strategies to attract more students into the high-tech manufacturing fields to meet future employment needs.
The plan includes close working arrangements between the College District and industry to define industrial needs, develop curriculum to address those needs, provide faculty development through externships, and recruit new students, especially underrepresented populations and adult learners.
The project expects to have 12 faculty participate in summer externships, produce 24 curriculum modules, impact up to 720 students in the four participating community colleges, and impact additional students through national dissemination. With a modular-based curriculum, modules can be changed as the industrial needs change, thus allowing for continuous updating. The project expects to recruit an additional 100 students from local high schools into the technician programs at the community colleges. This is accomplished by a campaign to develop positive and accurate public images of the work of technicians, images that reflect technicians continually meeting new challenges through critical thinking and problem solving.
