Energy Services & Technology students at KVCC learn advanced skills in multiple technical areas. The female student in the photo hopes to return to the program in the future; the male student is a veteran with a bachelor's degree who wants a more hands-on career.

Kennebec Valley Community College (KVCC) administrators and faculty crafted a versatile Energy Services and Technology program after Maine employers told them a stand-alone plumbing program would provide technicians with only a fraction of the skills that owners of energy efficient buildings and energy businesses need.

"We really need multi-faceted technicians with the licenses, to boot, and the experience, because their jobs are changing on a daily, weekly, monthly basis," Dana Doran said, summarizing industry's feedback to the college's initial idea of starting a stand-alone plumbing program. Doran is director of KVCC's Energy and Paper Programs.

The other "loud and clear request" from industry was that KVCC's new program teach critical thinking.

With the support of a $735,944 grant from the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education program, KVCC devised the Energy Services and Technology (EST) program. It teaches multiple trades and uses problem based learning (PBL) to develop students' critical thinking across academic and technical courses. In addition to awarding students associate in applied science degrees, the EST program prepares students to take four state licensing tests and four separate national industry certification exams.

Recent evidence of the success of the new program comes from the selection of KVCC's Bradley Harding as 2014 Plumbing Instructor of the Year by a national industry association.

"This degree doesn't pigeonhole them into one industry, one sector, or one job." Doran said. KVCC bills EST as the only program in Maine and one of the only programs nationwide that simultaneously teaches plumbing; heating, ventilation, and air conditioning; solid fuel; geothermal; and solar heating.

Students may take the national certification exams in refrigeration, green plumbing, geothermal heat pump installation, and solar heating at the college. The state administers the licensing tests for plumbing, oil burner, solid fuel, and propane/natural gas technicians at other sites.

The 12 students in the program's first cohort are on track to complete their two years of course work and graduate this May and take all eight exams. Thirteen first-year students just began their second semesters in the EST program this month.

"Our students now want to take advantage of the those multiple career opportunities," Doran said. He expects that some of the students may start their own businesses while others will be hired by heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) or mechanical services companies, or as technicians that operate industrial facilities.

Program Recruits Diverse Populations

In addition to a curriculum that blends diverse skills, the college is trying to recruit a diverse student population. It has hired Women, Work and Community—an economic development organization—to recruit women, veterans, and under-prepared adults throughout Maine for the program. The organization is also responsible for helping the individuals from these populations, which are underrepresented in STEM careers, complete the EST application process and obtain remedial education courses if they need them.

"Trying to get females into the trades nationwide is a major issue," Doran said. He and others at KVCC hope that WWC's statewide network will show women, and under-prepared men, that being an energy technician is a viable occupation for them.

Recruitment is only part of the challenge, however. Two women enrolled in the second cohort that started in fall 2013 were doing well in their classes, but left due to their responsibilities as primary caregivers. One of the veterans who started in the program in 2012-2013 has taken a break to receive care for post-traumatic stress disorder. Working out the best blend of student support services to help students persist is part of the college's ongoing ATE-funded effort, Doran said.

Another ATE Project Helps KVCC Make "Huge Change" to Problem-Based Learning

ATE is helping with the incorporation of problem-based learning (PBL) in two ways.

KVCC's ATE grant underwrites the cost of professional development for KVCC' s technical, math, and science faculty to learn the new pedagogy together. And the New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE), which provides the PBL workshops and consultation services, has received three consecutive ATE grants to develop PBL multi-media curricula for technical fields.

NEBHE's consulting team went to Maine to put the KVCC instructors through several of its PBL Challenges, authentic industry case studies, it developed with ATE support. In addition to on-campus workshops, the Boston-based consultants provide follow-up conference calls and support activities.

"By using several existing NEBHE multimedia PBL Challenges (eight PHOTON PBL Challenges and six STEM PBL Challenges) we prepared the instructors to understand how the challenges work and how to facilitate the problem solving process. By doing this, the instructors experienced the same frustration that, at first, their students would," Fenna Hanes explained. Hanes is the principal investigator of NEBHE's ATE grants and senior director of professional and resource development for NEBHE.

All of NEBHE's problem-based learning materials are available for free on its website: http://www.pblprojects.org.

"If the instructors had not experienced NEBHE's Challenges as their students would, they would not have understood their students’ initial frustration. Students as well as instructors will feel uncomfortable at first. We have seen this time and time again in our training.

"We have also found that both students and teachers become more acclimated every time they do another challenge. As they become more confident, they begin to use their problem-solving skills in other courses, in their life, and in the workplace," Hanes said.

Doran acknowledged that PBL is a "huge change" that requires considerable adjustments in thinking and interacting in the classroom for both faculty and students.

"It's not just a chalk-and-talk session with a lab component. Now you're really letting the students guide themselves with some instructor guidance so to speak. So the goal here is that you have deeper learning here because the students are forced to uncover and ask questions to solve the problem," he said.

Plumbing Instructor Receives National Award

One faculty member's excellent execution of the problem-based learning curriculum has received national recognition.

Bradley Harding, KVCC's only plumbing instructor, was selected as 2014 Plumbing Instructor of the Year by the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors (PHCC) Association Educational Foundation and CONTRACTOR magazine. In October, he received the award during the organization's convention in New Orleans.

The association praised Harding for his use of problem-based learning and inclusion of real-world situations in his classes.

Harding worked for 30 years in the plumbing industry before becoming an educator. At KVCC, he helped develop the state-of-the-art facility where students learn about new technologies like geothermal and solar thermal along with traditional plumbing, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning.

His award nomination by PHCC Maine states that Harding's "time commitment is unmatched, and he is very conscientious and thorough to make sure he does right by his students." To give students more career insights, Harding helps students find summer jobs, welcomes industry speakers into his classes, and consults with a 20-member industry advisory board to keep KVCC's curriculum current.