ATE Programs Influence Concepts for Center for Advanced and Emerging Technologies at MCC

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The Center for Advanced and Emerging Technologies is on the left and the Construction Education Center is on the right in this preliminary drawing of the facilities where Metropolitan Community College plans to utilize innovative instructional models developed by ATE programs.

Multiple Advanced Technological Education programs are influencing Metropolitan Community College's (MCC) concept for construction of a Center for Advanced and Emerging Technologies (CAET).

Architects created the concept for the CAET after listening to the leaders of the Midwest Center for Information Technology talk about the competency-based curriculum they have piloted with ATE support and the virtual center by the same name that MCIT now operates to teach information technology (IT) as an enabling technology for various industries.

"We're trying to design a space that is going to be more relevant to what the work will look like," said Tom Pensabene, dean of Information Technology and e-Learning at MCC and principal investigator of MCIT. MCIT is a regional ATE center hosted by AIM, a nonprofit organization created more than a decade ago by the Chamber of Commerce to facilitate the development of IT in Omaha and throughout Nebraska.

Pensabene said the new facility will make it possible to scale innovative programs that MCIT currently offers among the 10 colleges in its consortium, and to attempt new, "more radical approaches" to hands-on learning.

MCC's plan for the CAET includes a large fabrication lab for three-dimensional objects; an exhibit hall for faculty and students to work side-by-side with exhibitors; a data center that includes instruction on IT facility maintenance; MCC's corporate college; a hotel-concept business space for businesses to rent space as they need it; and space for co-located businesses.

The CAET will be connected via a pedestrian bridge to a new Construction Education Center where students enrolled in various building trade programs will work on model projects together. (The CAET is on the left; the Construction Education Center is on the right in the sketch.) The physical connection of the buildings is expected to facilitate the overlap of instruction for IT and building trades students. The $40 million construction project, funded with a blend of private and public monies, is expected to begin in 2014.

"It's a pretty ambitious project all the way around," Pensabene said

Influence of ATE programs

More audacious than these two buildings, are the college's plans to incorporate various ATE innovative instructional models into the CAET's curriculum and operations. A new academic vice president and five other college employees are traveling to the South Carolina Advanced Technological Education Center, an ATE resource center in Florence-Darlington, South Carolina, this week to learn about its financial sustainability plan and its just-in-time, multi-discipline pedagogy for teaching engineering technology.

The multi-disciplinary degrees the college already offers through its virtual CAET were influenced by multiple ATE initiatives. The college's use of problem-based learning can be traced directly to The Case Files™, an ATE project at Nashville State Technical Community College in the 2000s.

"The core concepts, we sort of stole shamelessly from our work with NSF-ATE over the years. The whole idea about IT becoming an enabling profession. The second continuation of the grant we had was to take what we were doing in the IT field and start to work within the colleges outside the IT field ... All the emphasis on work-related education, problem-based learning," Pensabene said of ATE's influence.

Enthusiasm from Business Community

It was through ATE that Pensabene learned about the National Coalition of Advanced Technology Centers. This community college-focused nonprofit helped MCC obtain input from more than 100 corporate leaders about the educational programs they would like to see at the CAET.

"Omaha actually is a huge IT town. We love to tell the story that we are the international headquarters of ConAgra. But ConAgra is not so much a food company as it is a holding company for 72 food companies that are enhanced by their IT ability," Pensabene said.

Omaha's business community, which weathered the recession better than other cities', has responded enthusiastically to the college's construction plans. Although it will be months before ground is even broken, some business leaders have already talked with Pensabene about how they could work with college students in the space.

Recently Mutual of Omaha asked him to start referring students who have completed just two IT courses to the company's internship program. Students who are successful in the nine-week internship program would be considered for the company's longer internships, and, eventually, would be considered for full time jobs. This new program, which will likely begin ahead of construction, could be "incredibly motivating" to students, Pensabene said.

"This building project is definitely a result of the outstanding support of the business community in Omaha," Pensabene said.

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