Celebrating Successful Students

By Squires, Dan Case, Pauline

The Machine Tool Program at Cowley College in Arkansas City, Kansas, is preparing students to become future leaders in the machining field, and the school recognizes the importance of sharing and celebrating those stories of success with the public to demonstrate the effectiveness of career and technical education (CTE) programs. Cowley College is a community and technical college offering more than 68 majors and degree programs. Established in the late 1960s, Cowley’s CTE programs have undergone curriculum adaptations to prepare machining students not only as machinists, but also engineers, foremen, business owners and teachers. The program has more than a million dollars worth of equipment, and two computer labs for programming machine tools have a total of 40 seats of MasterCam Software. Training includes competence with the conventional lathe, mills, CNC mills and lathes, programming and CMM machines and grinders. Students must learn to work in teams or alone, promoting self-reliance and patience. Dual Enrollment and Articulation Agreements

Local high school students are actively involved in Cowley’s machine tool program, and the school has facilitated their involvement by offering both dual credit enrollment and articulation agreements. The dual credit system has been in existence since the program was created and allows juniors and seniors in high school to attend the college during high school hours. Students get credit for both high school and college courses, providing them with an excellent opportunity to earn college credit while their high schools pay the fees and tuition.

Ryan Hernandez credits Cowley and his high school’s dual credit program with inspiring his career choice. He entered the Machine Tool Program as a junior in high school, earning both his machinist’s certificate and his high school diploma in 1994. Before he graduated, he was involved with the VIC A club, now SkillsUSA, and competed in competitions that included the International Skills contest in Switzerland, where he placed 14th in CNC machining.

“I started at Pre-Mac, GKN systems in Wellington, Kansas, right out of school in 1994. Within the first year I became a proficient machinist and project manager before moving to Boeing as a machinist,” he said. “After a year at Boeing, I moved into programming and programmed for three years. I then moved to BAE (now TECT Aerospace in Wellington, Kansas) as a continuous improvement analyst. While at BAE, I worked on a variety of projects from office related improvements to lean activities, to project management.”

In 2004 he was offered a position at a company where he is currently project manager with the production of a B52 Outboard Strut. Hernandez notes that Cowley’s teachers taught the basics and fundamentals that are often missed in training on the job. He adds, “Education gave me a good skill set to start with, but aptitude and ability to adapt and learn quickly are very important as well.”

Cowley’s articulation agreements with four-year universities provide opportunities for students to go on to earn engineering degrees. Articulation agreements are relatively new and few compared to dual credit programs. Articulation with local high schools is difficult because it requires that students stay at their own high schools and use equipment provided by their districts. Most districts do not have a million dollars for industrial grade machines, not to mention keeping the machines current to meet industries’ changing needs. But students such as Blake Stites are utilizing articulation to make great strides nonetheless. Stites, who earned his associate degree from Cowley in 2002, said that he chose to go to Cowley because he was looking for an advanced industrial training program that would prepare him for the field.

“But I also wanted the diversity of a solid college education,” he said. “It is impossible to train for every scenario one might encounter in the workforce, or in life, but with the critical thinking skills and core machining competencies I learned at Cowley, I was readily able to adapt to my job-specific duties.”

Stites went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in manufacturing engineering technology from Pittsburg State University in Kansas. He received an internship with Honeywell while at Pittsburg, and a full- time job upon graduation. Now he works as a numerical control analyst (a Honeywell term for CNC programmer). He uses CAD CAM software to develop programs for computer controlled machine tools. He says that the variety of work that he does is exciting; he programs tools, basic lathes and mills, four and five axis mills, laser cutters, wire and plunge EDMs, and new multi-axis (up to 13 axes) mill turn machines.

“My job challenges me, and I am learning new technology constantly. I would like to take on an engineering role in the future, so that I can continue learning about and possibly helping to develop new and emerging technology,” he said.

Fostering a Diverse Student Body

Women comprise a very small percentage of the machinists in the U.S. But schools like Cowley are giving female students an opportunity to pursue careers in a field that is n on traditional to their gender. Nora Lara took machining classes at Cowley as a junior and senior in high school. After getting her machinist certificate in 2006, she worked for a small job shop for six months in Win fie Id, Kansas. When she finished college, she moved to Texas where she was offered a job at Raytheon.

“I am a machinist (and) most of my work is for defense systems that are used in the Army,” Nora said. She adds that the dual enrollment credit program between her high school and Cowley played a big role in her decision to become a machinist, even though it wasn’t easy to accomplish her goal because “it is a field where you rarely find women.” But her perseverance transcended the challenges.

“I had a lot of hands-on experience in the classroom, but when a company hires you they understand you don’t come with all the skills you will need,” she said. “They spent time training me, and as long as I was willing to work and learn, I never had a problem. Asking questions was a big plus.” Nora plans to continue her education aiming for a baccalaureate degree in mechanical engineering.

For Nora, becoming a machinist is a family affair because while she was training to become a machinist at Cowley as a freshman, her father was also doing so as a sophomore. Damian Lara’s story highlights the importance of providing current workers with ongoing training opportunities. He took the machine tool program with the help of his employer, General Electric Aircraft Maintenance Division. Through a company program encouraging employee education, Damian received financial support to attend Cowley’s Machine Tool Program. Following completion of the program, he was transferred into the machining department where he received a considerable increase in pay.

“I started as a mechanic at General Electric Aircraft Maintenance and I took the Machine Tool Program at Cowley College and eventually became a machinist at General Electric. In my current position I make and repair aircraft products.”

The Importance of Celebrating Student Success

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Vocational and Adult Education lists one of its goals as “to heighten awareness among a wide range of constituencies about the superior education and training that community colleges provide.” The words “accountability,”"quality” and “effectiveness” appear again and again in the initiatives discussed in the department’s Fact Sheet Series. One such initiative seeks to “identify the characteristics of a ‘market-driven college.” One way to illustrate the quality of our efforts is by locating CTE graduates within the market for which we have prepared them. A little time and a simple questionnaire can result in a testimonial to the accountability and effectiveness of our educational programs.

Any academic or technical program needs to recognize student success, but that recognition normally stays in-house and is usually limited to current students. We need to do a little more thinking outside the box of our institution. Instead of focusing only on the few hundred students currently enrolled, we need to look beyond; our successful students are everywhere. Cowley did just that when it sent out e-mailed questionnaires last summer to selected students. Hundreds of students have successfully applied the principles learned at Cowley to help in all types of industry-from plastics for toys to the high-tech aerospace industry. The aforementioned former students are but a sampling of success stories garnered from responses Cowley received to the questionnaire, and these students’ success stories speak to the effectiveness of our programs and our educational system in helping students become successful in meeting the needs of the 21st century workplace.

Showcasing our graduates can celebrate both the successes of the students and the educational programs that have prepared them with marketable skills. The students’ own words speak to the accountability, the effectiveness, and the quality of their training. Listening to their stories, the public is informed of the flexibility of their training, the potential for advancement, and the fact that schools and industries encourage their success. With a little forethought, a questionnaire and a computer, educators can celebrate their students’ successes, encourage current students, recruit new students, and show the world the vitality and validity of CTE programs in promoting future leaders in many fields. Dan Squires

is a machine tool technology instructor at Cowley College in Arkansas, Kansas. He can be contacted by e-mail at squires@cowley.edu .

Pauline Case

taught technology classes at Cowley College from 2002 to 2006. She can be contacted by e-mail at pawlinel@yahoo.com.

Copyright Association for Career & Technical Education Jan 2008

(c) 2008 Techniques. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.