Faculty-student effort reduces equipment availability to student ratio by  2:1 or 1:1—increasing hands-on learning time

Yavapai Community College Electrical Engineering Instructor Rick Peters, and student interns Riley Lewis and Scott Blakeley were busy over the summer.  Working together, they added to the number of electric motor control trainers and robots in the Electrical Instrumentation Laboratory at the Community College’s Career and Technical Education Center located at the Prescott airport.  

According to the College, the new trainer “will continue to lower the equipment to student ratios to 2:1 or 1:1.”  Because of the additional trainer boards, students will have access and time to work on them.  One consequence is that students leaving CTEC will be better prepared to enter the workforce.

A photo of the electric motor control trainers, which was provided the Governing Board at the September meeting as a part of the Agenda, follows below.

Controller Boards at CTEC

Tells Board he appreciates cooperation he is receiving in adding new courses

The Verde Valley Academy for Technical Education superintendent, Bob Weir, expressed his appreciation at the September Governing Board meeting to Yavapai Community College for the cooperation he is receiving from its staff.

Weir said that there is now concurrent enrollment in the VACTE medical assistance program, culinary arts program and welding program.  These were all new concurrent enrollment programs with the College and are available to all high school students in the JTED District, which covers the Verde Valley.

Enrollment so far includes 12 students in the medical assistance program, who eventually will take nine classes through Yavapai College.  There are seven students from Mingus and six students  from Sedona Red Rock high school enrolled in the culinary arts program.  VACTE did not market the culinary arts program to Camp Verde because it has its own dual enrollment program with Yavapai College.  The welding program has eight students mixed in with adults in the night program.

Weir also told the Board that VACTE has created a five-year strategic plan and hopes to have an independent CTE facility jointly with the College in the next five years.

You may view the three-minute report by Superintendent Weir to the Governing Board  in full by clicking on the video below. (Note the speaker’s microphone was not turned on for about the first 45 seconds. You can turn the volume up on your computer and then hear the report as picked up by other microphones in the room until the speaker’s was activated.)

Essay:  What happened to the 2004 Northern Arizona Regional Skills program that was to provide CTE from the facility on the Verde Campus

This essay, which you may read by clicking below on the title, focuses on the question: “What happened to the Northern Arizona Regional Skills program that was opened in 2004 on the Verde Campus?”  The essay is heavily footnoted with authority so the reader may check for himself or herself the data contained in it it.

It provides needed background for anyone who intends to fully understand why the Community College appears so reluctant to invest in a career and technical education program in the Verde Valley.  It also details the CTE hopes and aspirations of those who were developing the Verde Valley program thirteen years ago.  Those hopes and aspiration were dashed when the Community College set up a joint program with the town of Prescott Valley to locate a CTE facility at the Prescott airport.

MAJOR VERDE CTE FACILITY