getahead Guide to Career Advancement
Local Center Trains High School Students for High-Tech Careers
>
By Al Dozier
S
ome Midlands high school students are looking beyond history, math and English courses to hone high-tech career skills.
What’s making this possible is a new trend in some school districts toward hightech instruction. A centerpiece in this effort is the Center for Advanced Technical Studies in Lexington-Richland School District 5, which some say could become a national model. The center opened during the 2012-13 school year in a rural area on Mount Vernon Church Road near Chapin. It now has an enrollment of more than 1,000. The 17 different courses offered at the center are available to students in all of the high schools in the district, though it has an immediate affinity to Spring Hill High School, a new magnet school right next door. The magnet school offers programs in exercise science, environmental studies engineering, entertainment and entrepreneurship. At the Center for Advanced Technical Studies, a student can enroll in four courses, arranging classroom time to work with his or her existing schedule of courses. A typical routine is three hours of instruction every other day. Courses include aerospace engineering; agriculture and biosystems engineering technology; biomedical sciences and integrated technology; clean energy and engineering systems; and networking and cyber security technology. But the center is not limited to hightech engineering and technology instruction. Students can also choose law enforcement; fire and rescue services; welding technology; veterinary sciences; culinary
22
get ahead
arts; and digital art and design. The instruction is not what you normally see in a classroom, according to Dr. Bob Couch, the center’s director. Students have the opportunity to use their own imaginations to develop solutions to the problems facing their area of study, be it health care or animal science. Students can be found throughout the center, some working on their own in the high-tech facilities that provide the electrical gadgets and equipment needed. They become critical thinkers and problem solvers, even if it’s a seemingly big problem. Matthew Herron of Dutch Fork High School says he’s conducting research on red blood cells. Some students have already been recognized with research awards. A similar high-tech center will soon become available to Midlands students in Richland District 2 when the Richland 2 Institute for Innovation (R2i2) opens in August of 2016. It’s a huge project. It will be housed in a 180,000-squarefoot building on a 32-acre site in the heart of the Village at Sandhill at a cost of around $40 million. Most of the focus areas of the curriculum are designated as advanced. The initial study areas include advanced engineering, advanced IT, advanced hospitality arts, supply chain logistics, advanced manufacturing and managerial business. Just like the District 5 program, R2i2 will offer certification programs that could
The Center for Advanced Technical Studies teaches everything from welding to cyber security.
help students land a job. A key component of the R2i2 program will be the multiple partnerships it is now developing with regional businesses, colleges and universities. The Lexington-Richland 5 center, meanwhile, is already winning accolades. It’s received multiple achievement awards and draws visitors from out of state, even out of the nation, with delegations from China coming to visit. The center received the Platinum High Achievement Award from the Southern Regional Education Board. Students from the center have already won numerous awards at Career and Technical Student Organization competitions. Couch, who developed the center, has worked extensively in South Carolina on technical education issues. He previously served as state director for career and technical education for hundreds of schools throughout the state. He also serves as an advisor to the General Assembly in his role as a member of the state’s Education Oversight Committee. So he already had a grasp on technical education. free-times.com
twitter.com/freetimessc
Couch says he was not given any extensive recommendations on what he should do when he accepted the job, though the school district and board had input as he developed his plan. He didn’t follow any model, just focused on what today’s student actually needs in a workplace that has changed dramatically. He recalls Lexington-Richland 5 Superintendent Stephen Hefner’s frequent analogy to what education access should mean. “He would say it’s like an interstate highway,” Couch says. As students move ahead on the highway, they have to consider the best exits. Those pathways are available in a variety of ways at the new center. Couch says properly trained instructors are a key to his mission. He wanted teachers who had real job experience in the course being offered. But that didn’t exclude academic credentials. He wanted both. South Carolina has long had post-high school technical schools that have trained students for jobs in high demand. Now, for at least some students, that training is starting even sooner. facebook.com/freetimes
Dec. 30, 2015