A new respect
for technical colleges

There’s a new respect for technical colleges nationally.

A recent string of media reports and studies point to technical colleges as the answer for strengthening local economies. Technical colleges are a key partner with American business and industry in providing a quality standard of living.

Others say the guarantee of a solid-paying job for a four-year college graduate isn’t what it once was – but technical colleges, by their very makeup, train students for careers in high-demand fields.

Some of the reports point to the importance of technical colleges by indicating they train 80 percent of the nation’s police, fire and emergency technicians and nearly half of its nurses.

Some even go as far as to say community technical colleges are needed now more than ever to bolster our economy and return American strength back to industry – and reduce unemployment through training, and retraining, of those who are unemployed or underemployed. The local technical college has an impact on the nation’s economy as well as the communities it serves.

I would agree with all of these. Gateway serves a need in our community by offering training to a community’s most vital careers – police, fire, emergency medical technician and nurse. It also trains students to enter career fields that are in demand, and offer good wages.

Graduates, and the employers who hire them, both benefit. Graduates receive quality training in a high-demand career area and the economy is bolstered when employers can hire trained workers. Finally, our boot camps and programs help the underemployed to reach a higher quality of living.

Community colleges are in the front row, offering students even more options than ever through its many programs, technical degrees and customized training.

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Four online Gateway programs
receive HLC accreditation

A regional accrediting body has given its stamp of approval to four Gateway Technical College online programs, providing students with the assurance that coursework is the same high quality as the more traditional educational delivery approaches.

The Higher Learning Commission voted to extend Gateway’s accreditation to include distance delivery of the associate of applied science degrees in accounting, instructional assistant, supervisory management and technical communication.

The Higher Learning Commission’s Institutional Actions Council voted to extend the accreditation on June 27 and the Commission Board of Trustees validated that action July 3.

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Three sworn in
as board members

Ram P. Bhatia, Pamela Zenner-Richards and Neville Simpson were sworn in as members of the Gateway Technical College District Board of Trustees.

Simpson is a new member to the board while Bhatia and Zenner-Richards were reappointed to their seats. The three were appointed to three-year terms to run from 2008-11.

Bhatia, Racine, is a manager for operational excellence for ABB Inc., and will begin his second term on the board. Zenner-Richards, Racine, is the District 6 Racine County Supervisor, and begins her third term on the board. Zenner-Richards also was selected as the trustee board chairperson. Simpson, Kenosha, retired in 2007 as director of international and Latin American sales at Snap-on Incorporated.

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Attend Gateway open house
from your desk

“We are accommodating our students’ and prospective students’ busy lifestyles by giving them access to Gateway information without having to come to one of our campuses,” says Zina Haywood, Executive Vice President/Provost Gateway Technical College. “We have created many opportunities for students to register for classes, take courses, request e-brochures, and ask questions online. This is a natural extension of online services to students.”

Visitors can come to the Gateway Technical College Web site www.gtc.edu/virtualopenhouse during open house hours and view photo tours of the campuses, view career program videos featuring an instructor from the selected programs, engage in online chat with program instructors and student services professionals, link to important forms relating to admissions and financial aid, and rely on the assistance of an online program host for where to find the information required. To get more information about which programs will be featured, you can visit www.gtc.edu/virtualopenhouse up until an hour before the start of the open house.

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Gateway radio club
participates in national event

Gateway Technical College’s Amateur Radio club, N9GTC, joined other ham radio operators across the nation to demonstrate their emergency communications capabilities noon June 28 to noon June 29 at the field north of the Center for Advanced Technology and Innovation, 2320 Renaissance Blvd.

The weekend event at Gateway was part of a national Field Day event as a finale for the Amateur Radio Week sponsored by the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), the national association for Amateur Radio operators. The public was invited by Gateway’s Amateur Radio club to come and see ham radio’s capabilities and learn how they can get their own FCC radio license. The club was created earlier this year at the college.

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Gateway to receive
grant for new boot camp

Gateway Technical College received two of 11 funding awards in the first round of Regional Workforce Alliance (RWA) of Southeastern Wisconsin’s Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) Innovation Fund program.

Gateway received a $94,185 Demonstration grant to develop and deliver an industrial machine repair boot camp that will prepare under-employed and unemployed workers as industrial maintenance technicians. The program will also provide employers with a training program to upgrade the skill level of incumbent workers. Boot camps are already in place for welding and computer numerical control machining.

Gateway also was awarded a $35,000 Exploratory Investment award for an information technology talent development program that will develop skills and career paths in IT architecture and modeling. Gateway’s partner in the effort is ictect, inc., a new business incubator at Gateway’s Center for Advanced Technology.

WIRED aims to foster new partnerships and new ways of delivering education and training in order to enhance the talent development system for the region. The RWA is leading the implementation of the WIRED grant from the U.S. Department of Labor.

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New science labs to open
on the Racine Campus

Remodeling done to a science lab on the fifth floor of the Technical Building on the Racine Campus will soon open and give students even more opportunities to receive hands-on training in a quality facility.

The lab will include physics, chemistry, anatomy-physiology and biology classrooms. Students will also benefit from a lab preparation area and new science lab equipment. The lab is slated to be ready by the Sept. 3 start of fall classes.

The remodeled lab area was created to allow the Racine Campus to meet the needs of an increasing number of students requesting science courses including those required to take them as part of several Gateway programs.

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Albrecht begins term
as national president for ACTE

Gateway President Bryan Albrecht began his tenure as president of the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) in July.

Albrecht will oversee the national organization, direct it in its mission and become its chief representative. His term is to last one year. He will continue to serve a leadership role with ACTE following that in its past president position for a year. Albrecht served on the board the year prior to becoming president, as well.

The Association for Career and Technical Education is the nation’s largest not-for-profit education association dedicated to the advancement of education that prepares youth and adults for successful careers. It provides advocacy, public awareness and access to information, professional development and tools that enable members to be successful and effective leaders. ACTE has more than 30,000 members.

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Summer session
strong in enrollments

Many students utilized Gateway’s new summer term, with enrollments in several areas meeting or exceeding what was expected.

Enrollment increased 275 percent this summer compared to Summer 2007. Several course sections had to be added to accommodate the increase of students using and benefiting from the summer term. New sections were opened for On Demand Accounting, which began May 2008, the start of the new summer term, as well as some general studies courses.

And it’s not only students in Gateway programs benefiting from the added offerings – area students attending four-year universities elsewhere, but home for the summer, can earn credits in those Gateway general studies courses and transfer them to their four-year institutions.

The new term will add opportunities for students to take more classes during a calendar year. Students under the new format could possibly graduate within a year and a half from Gateway if they take full credit loads four consecutive semesters. The new calendar includes three, full 15-week semesters.

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CNC boot camp
completion ceremony held

A total of 10 students completed Gateway’s most recent computer numerical control (CNC) boot camp.
Five of the students also completed the nationally-endorsed Manufacturers Skills Standards Council (MSSC) Safety Module, which trains students to maintain a safe and productive work environment. The MSSC assessment allows students to demonstrate that they have mastered the skills increasingly needed in the high-growth, technology-intensive jobs of the 21st century.

Eight students completed the Critical Core Manufacturing Skills program, which trains students in “soft” skills areas such as problem solving, critical thinking, and working as part of a team.

Gateway’s boot camp helps dislocated and underemployed workers by putting them through a rigorous program which trains them to be CNC machine operators. Students leave the 14-week, 40-hour-a-week program with the technical skills to land a job, or to apply the 14 credits earned toward a Gateway CNC production technician technical diploma. The next CNC boot camp will begin in September at Gateway’s Racine Campus.

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Area business leaders serve
on national career pathways initiative

Gateway is one of six technical colleges involved in a national study which will work to identify, enroll, educate and prepare underemployed adults for high-demand careers.

Several local business leaders joined in a national career pathways initiative during a July 17 summit organized to discuss the disconnect between the need and availability of adult workers specifically in the areas of manufacturing and logistics.

Those business leaders included Dave Bradshaw, vice president and general manager of A&E Inc.; Gloria Bergman, director of human resources for Lavelle Industries; David Hagman, president of Vista International Packaging; Mike Schulz, vice president of operations for Vista International Packaging; and Tom Kassouf, senior vice president, Commercial and Industrial Group for Snap-on Inc.

Gateway President Bryan Albrecht also attended and offered the college lead the local effort.

The effort will bring together manufacturing and logistics groups to determine the skills needed for their industry and how technical colleges can offer career pathways to adult students leading to jobs within those areas. Despite efforts by technical colleges and others to train skilled workers, national studies indicate that a lack of a skilled workforce is still the major challenge in nearly every industry and state.

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Horizon Center hosts
state automotive teach training institute

The Foundation of the Wisconsin Automotive and Truck Dealers Association held its annual weeklong summer institute at the Horizon Center for Transportation Technology in early July, training 55 college and high school technical education instructors.

Among other topics, this year’s institute focused on the new Snap-on Diagnostics Certification program so that all instructors will have had an opportunity to learn the tools and have the ability to teach their students how to use them, as well. The foundation also provided participants with the equipment and training to build their own vehicle electronic boards to use in their own classrooms, valued at $2,000 to $2,200, as well as learning about the fuels of the future.

This year marked the eighth the Foundation has put on the institute, the fourth held at Gateway, and the first at the Horizon Center. The overall focus of it is to provide up-to-date car and truck information to high school and college technical education instructors.

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Gateway rolls out
updated Web site

Students and visitors to Gateway’s updated Web site will find it even more user friendly. It provides increased opportunities to access services online and find answers to any questions they might have about the college and its programs.

Within the new Web site is the creation of My Gateway, a section giving students access to all their online services within one area. My Gateway allows student access to online registration through WebAdvisor – even with new students – as well as e-mail, class and career information, student applications and wireless connections.

It will offer them tools to get the classes they need in the upcoming semester and tell them whether those classes are available – and then online services to help them pay for those classes. It will even offer online help.

The Workforce and Economic Development Division has its own area, highlighting services to our business partners.

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Gateway offers new
online registration services

Are you new to Gateway? Want to set up your records on your time, online? You can!

Students new to Gateway may now set up their initial student record and complete their registration online via WebAdvisor. The online method represents just one more way that Gateway is striving to be the most accessible we possibly can be to all potential students.

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Foundation golf
outing successful

The Gateway Technical College Foundation’s 14th Annual Greater Gateway Golf Classic was a success, raising more than $22,000 for student scholarships.

About 120 golfers and numerous supporters participated in the annual event held at the Meadowbrook Country Club in Racine. George Morava of Williams Bay won the foundation scholarship golf ball drop contest.

Money raised from the outing will be used to provide deserving students with scholarships. For more information on how to apply for a scholarship, go to the Gateway Web site and click on Foundation scholarships. Those seeking to contribute to the Foundation can click on the Giving Options link.

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Continuing Gateway students
can now apply for scholarships online

The Gateway Technical College Foundation has made it easier to apply for scholarships – online and literally, any time, any day of the week.

Continuing students have until Sept. 19 to apply for a scholarship. More than 125 scholarships totaling $45,000 are available each year to continuing Gateway students through the foundation.

Applicants need not complete the online application in one sitting. They may choose to return later, especially if there are essay questions needed to be completed. Also, only one online application needs to be completed per applicant, since the system will automatically submit their name for all scholarships for which they are eligible.

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