Laramie County Community College (LCCC), and several partnering two-and four-year educational institutions and companies, seek to create unique and effective renewable/wind technology programs to serve as national models. Objectives are to improve renewable energy technology programs by increaing academic rigor and relevance; to concurrently grow career pathways; and to enhance and broaden recruitment, retention, and placement efforts with an emphasis on underrepresented populations. LCCC staff, supported by well-qualified curriculum and evaluation consultants, are to provide leadership and administrative management for the project. The primary target audiences include: 1) current and prospective community college students (traditional age and returning adults); 2) postsecondary faculty involved in teaching renewable/wind energy technologies;and 3) other academic and technical faculty interested in the development of a team-based, problem solving learning model. This approach recognizes that the core abilities and foundational competencies for wind energy technology include electricity, hydraulics, fluid power, and mechanical drive systems, which are also the foundational components of other traditional and renewable/alternative energy technologies. Building upon research, the proposal promises to verify wind energy specific knowledge, skills, and attibutes that combines STEM competencies and industry-driven, performance-based, standards for integrated systems and wind energy technology programs. The partnership is to promote outreach and dissemination efforts at local, regional, and national levels.
aimed to improve and expand academic rigor and relevance across the wind energy technology program established at Laramie County Community College in 2008. Using a team-based approach that united subject matter experts from varied fields, the project broadly sought to embrace the capabilities in place at the College and to expand the academic rigor in several courses to the benefit of students in many disciplines with a specific lens on ensuring quality programming for wind energy technology. The development of several components of a rigorous curriculum is the most tangible result of this initiative. The resulting curricular framework clearly articulates the decision-making and skills-demonstration capabilities which define a skilled technician ready for successful employment in the renewable energies industries. The framework, applied to numerous content-specific and skills-based courses, allows for the deployment of learning activities appropriate to the developmental level of a student for the identified learning outcomes. Finally, the curricular structure that was developed supports the scaffolding of learning objectives required to evaluate competent performance in a number of courses that serve multiple certification programs in the industrial trades. The development and application of the consistent curricular structure across so many courses, courses which are required in several of the industrial trades programs at Laramie County Community College, represents a substantial effort to make uniform the academic foundation that drives these programs. The identification of the common cross-cutting abilities and the articulation of the foundational competencies required of technicians across industry establishes a rigor that enhances the readiness of technicians as they leave the College prepared for employment in multiple fields.
