FIW Advisory Committee report
Jeremy A.Cox
The FIW Advisory Committee has been meeting with RRCC President Michele Haney and the executive team monthly for the last three months. Our last FIW advisory committee meeting was Thursday the 22nd. We appropriately started the meeting with President Haney and CFO Peggy Morgan’s presentation on the anticipated FIW budget for 2017/2018. Laura McGee will have a forthcoming report on these details shortly.
After the budget presentation, the advisory committee got to the business of the future direction of the department, which we structured into the attached Five Year Plan. There were several goals for improvements to the FIW department that were identified in the upcoming five years; some of the more urgent focus will be on clarifying and publicizing course sequencing for certificate and degree seekers, so that students will have easier access to what classes to take when, to achieve their academic goals. The dust collection system is another major concern for our department, staff and advisory committee. We will be pursuing every opportunity to expedite acquiring this much-needed new system. We also discussed the path to develop corporate partnerships to get our student on the job training, and prepare our students to find employment, right after graduation. We also plan to expand two areas of our department meet the needs of the woodworking industry. Over the next few years, we will expand our Finishing and Technology curriculum in addition to adding new certificates, to help students focus on viable woodworking industry demands. We will also pursue grant writing to achieve our goals over the next five years and work with campus resources to do so.
The above conversations were only to expand our curriculum, in a manageable approach, to better fulfill the needs of students to find employment, with industry employment opportunities. We have no interest in removing the classes, and/or the curriculum that makes our department great. Furniture, Lutherie, Turning, marquetry, strip built watercraft, and carving are only a few classes and programs we recognize as having great value to our department, and we will not lose these, to add another area of our department. Our department is merely in need of better alignment with the CCCS goal to create students in the CTE programs especially, that will be ready to enter the workforce after graduation.
We ran out of time on Wednesday to assess the relevance of our current certificates for future program planning. We have planned for a special meeting this coming week to discuss the certificates specifically, as well as to define a list of core competencies students should master in their coursework to enable success for future career decisions. I have been told that there are too many FIW certificates, and we need to remove those that are redundant or otherwise impair students' abilities to clearly decide on a specific certificate, over another. There are also larger ramifications with the CCCS system, of having certificates that students are identifying in their registration, but are not completing. Lack of completion directly affects future program funding. We will be looking at historical data for completion rates as well as which certificates offer very similar curriculum, to determine which can be removed over a two year teach out period. Again, this does not mean that we are removing the classes you love, or need for graduation. This does mean that we need to look at which certificates can be removed to satisfy the targets of RRCC success. If any certificates are proposed to be removed, we will make that announcement in the next few weeks, as well as structure a spring 2017 and beyond to allow students an opportunity to complete their identified certificates.
I anticipate we will make progress on this issue this week and have more to report.
Sincerely,
Jeremy Cox