Southeast Community College (SCC) will establish a National Center of Excellence for Chemistry-Based Technician Education at its Lincoln, Nebraska, campus. Through this center, SCC will coordinate and direct a comprehensive curriculum and educational materials development project for chemistry-based technician education. The new curriculum will be developed for associate degree programs with input from a national consortium of employed technicians, business and industry representatives, community college and high school instructors, university professors, and the American Chemical Society's National Voluntary Industry Standards project. A new curriculum will also be developed for those already employed as chemistry technicians following a comprehensive survey of as many employed technicians as can be reached nationally with the help of local alliances and the American Chemical Society's Division of Chemical Technicians. Both traditional and technologically advanced educational materials will be developed for all curriculum projects and published and/or distributed for the purpose of delivering the new curricula in a manner consistent with modern educational theories and systems. Workshops for the enhancement of high school and community college faculty will be held during the summers in cooperation with local industries. Topics of the workshops will center around the modern work place and associated instrumentation and technologies community colleges use in the training of technicians. Marketing of chemistry technology as a career will be addressed, with special attention given to underrepresented groups, To help the center achieve these goals, all chemistry technician training programs, their students and graduates, the business and industrial communities they serve, and the feeder high schools in their areas will be united into a national community college network centered at SCC. The entire project will be guided by a national advisory board and a s teering committee.
