A big summer for Working Connections
Pictured above and below: hard-working attendees and instructors from Winter 2012 Working Connections.
Working Connections – a cutting-edge, cost-effective professional development program for IT faculty – continues to thrive as one of the National Convergence Technology Center’s crown jewels. This summer we’re celebrating the 12th year hosting our version of Working Connections. Since our first event all the way back in 2002, we’ve trained more than 875 faculty members in over 30 in-demand topics from A+ to vSphere.
Our longitudinal surveys suggest that this translates to over 36,000 students being impacted by the training provided by Working Connections. Our research also tells us that most of our attendees choose topics they aren’t currently teaching, underscoring the value our free training creates in pushing IT convergence courses, degrees, and certificates in new directions.
A cross-country takeover
This year brings an exciting transition for Working Connections as we expand to two other locations. For the first time, in addition to the usual July event at Collin College in Frisco, Texas, this summer the National CTC will also help produce Working Connections training in Lansing, Michigan and in Jacksonville, Florida. This expansion obviously creates a larger capacity; whereas in 2012 the Texas Working Connections hosted 98 participants, for 2013, we’re expecting to host over 170 across all three venues.
Our thanks to Karl Dietrich at Lansing Community College and Ernie Friend at Florida State College at Jacksonville for fearlessly spearheading this new “franchising” of the National CTC’s Working Connection events. Both Karl and Ernie are well-seasoned members of the National CTC’s Leadership Team.
Seeds of success
For those interested in history, this Working Connections model has its roots in a 1998 partnership between Microsoft and the American Association of Community Colleges. Since that funding ended, a few other colleges have hosted Working Connection-style programs on their own, all with the same goal: train IT faculty in the latest technology curriculum to help their students meet important workforce needs.
Be a part of our success story!
Registration’s ended for the Working Connections North event in Lansing, Michigan. But seats are still available in Texas and Florida:
Working Connections Texas, July 8-12 in Frisco, Texas – seven tracks
- Advanced Network Analysis, Troubleshooting, and Security (Wireshark) – wait list only
- Citrix Application Virtualization
- EMC Cloud Infrastructure & Services
- Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2012 – wait list only
- Introduction to Forensics – wait list only
- Introduction to iOS Mobile Programming – wait list only
- VMWare vSphere 5.1 – wait list only
Working Connections South, July 15-19 in Jacksonville, Florida – four tracks
- Advanced Network Analysis, Troubleshooting, and Security (Wireshark)
- EMC Information Storage & Management
- Programming Mobile Devices
- VMWare vSphere 5.1
As soon as these summer events end, we’ll start ramping up for Winter 2013 Working Connections. We hope to see you in Texas this December 16-18, 2013. Save the date!
Have you attended one of our Working Connection training events? If so, how did the training help you in the classroom?
Working Connections North is off to a great start!