Implementation Week

This week, like all of the previous weeks, was another busy one.  Our meeting on Monday resulted in me receiving the go-ahead to begin the client survey as well as beginning to prepare handouts for the continuing education courses that are scheduled for Monday through Wednesday next week.  In addition to these tasks I was told to schedule a pilot brief online "survival" sessions at NEMCC's Corinth and New Albany sites during the last week of July.

Work for this week was delayed on Tuesday due to orientation for university parallel (a.k.a. transfer) students.  This task was part of my normal faculty duties, so no time was spent in the performance of my practicum.

Wednesday was dedicated to finishing all of the handouts for my continuing education courses.  I employed one of my favorite multi-media applications, Aviary, to capture and edit screen shots to be incorporated within quick reference guides for the students in the courses.

My final day this week, yesterday, was spent implementing the client survey for the division.  I had already constructed the survey using Survey Monkey and began sending invitations to hundreds of people within Tishimingo county. 

Upcoming CEU courses, client survey, and researrch planning

This week saw the final planning and scheduling for the CEU courses that I will be teaching this summer.  Three courses were scheduled for the last week of June, each course lasting 5 hours and worth 0.5 CEU credit to K-12 educators enrolled.  The courses were taken from the outlines that I have already submitted to introduce teachers from the surrounding counties/municipalities to Web 2.0 applications for use in the classroom. 

Also this week I was told to present the client survey that I developed previously to the Division at the next staff meeting this coming Monday.  Following the presentation the survey willo be sent to various clients within the district for completion.

Finally, my experiences in this practicum have caused me to reflect on the need to develop a research proposal to ascertain the impact of non-professional credentialing on community college students.  This project is currently in the planning stages but, in my opinion, has the potential to provide valuable data in a seemingly neglected area of education research.

Training and development, a vital part of economic developoment

In my experiences this week I continued examining the role of colleges and university in outreach to the business community.  I gave a brief overview of the purpose of the Workforce Training and Economic Development division at NEMCC in a previous post, but that brief intro only gave a small window into the larger role of institutions of higher learning in assisting industry in continued growth.

I have discovered that many institutions of higher learning, including my own, offer training to company employees in quality control/management practices, particularly the approach adopted by Toyota known as Lean.  Lean Manufacturing, in its various iterations, centers on the elimination of wasteful practices and is intended to improve every aspect of an organization through teaching employees to examine how problems/processes flow from the start of a process to the end product.  The training of this approach to quality control entails a rigorous series of workshops that usually culminate in the completion of a project at a company.

The point that has become a vital point of outreach/revenue for colleges and universities in recent years is to offer Lean training to clients within the larger community.  The role of the institution is to facilitate on-site training in Lean techniques followed by the awarding of non-credit credentials as proof of a recognized professional certification for a company's employees.  Thus, the mission of the university/community college to serve the general public is fulfilled in addition to the building of crucial industrial partners for future collaborations.

Looking for funding sources...the never-ending quest

This week, although shortened by the Memorial Day holiday, was still very productive, especially in introducing me to the complexities of program financing.  Due to the rapid process of development and implementation required in creating workforce training courses, the location of funding is crucial to success.

To this end, I spent many hours this week combing through requests for proposals (aka, RFPs) through the US government's site grants.gov as well as grant guidelines for private foundations such as the Kresge Foundation.  From this work I have concluded that finding the grant that "fits" a proposal is as important as the content of the proposal.