CCN Impact

With the annual National Visiting Committee meeting this week, the National Convergence Technology Center gathered the best impact reports from several of the Convergence College Network schools.

CCN Success Stories

• Faculty at Calhoun Community College received Palo Alto training via the “Firewall Essentials” track at Summer Working Connections so that they could start the Palo Alto Academy program and begin teaching the material.
• City College of San Francisco Instructor Sam Bowne taught the Winter Working Connections online track “Attacking and Defending Web Applications” to 21 faculty from 9 states. 86% of those surveyed after the training will “absolutely” or “most likely” use what they learned in their classroom.
• El Centro College students participated in the international Cisco networking competition, which is divided into two levels: Cisco Certified Entry Networking Technician (CCENT) and Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA). Student Joshua Perkins finished ranking 10th among all contestants.
• Fox Valley Technical College tripled the size of its students help desk, now using 20+ students each semester to repair student and staff computers for free while gaining valuable work and customer relationship skills. Students are required to put time into working at the help desk as part of their classes for the “Help Desk Support Specialist” degree.
• As requested by Georgia Northwestern Technical College’s local BILT, added six certificates (CompTIA A+, Computer Forensics/Security Specialist, Help Desk Specialist, MS Network Administrator, PC Repair/Network Technician, and Web Site Developer) to its program.
• Herzing College successfully recreated Summer Working Connections’ 2016 “Firewall Essentials” track for local Atlanta IT faculty. 15 instructors from five area schools attended the five-day event.
• Houston Community College recently designated as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense 2-Year Education. Faculty member Scott Hillman states that “Without Working Connections [training] and the CCN [faculty network], Houston CC would not have achieved this.”
• Kirkwood Community College created three new certificate programs for the 2017-18 academic year, including a “Customer Service Professional Certificate” that focuses on “soft skills,” decision making, and team work.
• The CIT program at Lansing Community College has set at least 26 students up with paid IT internships/apprenticeships during calendar year 2016. 14 of those were from convergence related programs.
• Lone State College Instructor Rajiv Malkan started incorporating big data analytic concepts in his IT classes. He gave a demo presentation on this practice at the January 2017 WASTC Winter ICT Educator’ conference in San Jose and will make a similar demo presentation at the 2017 HI TEC conference in Salt Lake City.
• Milwaukee Area Technical College recently started hosting “reverse career fairs” where students sit at tables and sell themselves to employer recruiters circulating around the room. Students may also perform a 3-minute “stage” presentation to all recruiters at a designated time .
• Northwest Vista College worked with Austin Community College on creating competency-based education classes in the IT/IA discipline area.
• Orange Coast College Instructor Bill Saichek will deliver a week-long “Preparing to Teach the Internet of Things” track at two 2017 Summer Working Connections events – one at Collin College, one at Lansing Community College. He co-presented a similar talk to 60 attendees (standing-room-only) at last summer’s HI TEC conference in Pittsburgh.
• Renton Technical College plans to create a new “Firewall Essentials” class in 2018 based on training received at 2016 Summer Working Connections.
• At the fall CCN quarterly meeting attended by 44 faculty members from 35 schools, Scottsdale Community College Instructor Ron Monroig gave a
  30-minute special demonstration of its “homegrown” virtual lab system – built on 66 donated servers – that mimics NetLab. This was developed in part because of local business demand for more cloud and virtualization training.
• Bachelor of Science in Information Systems Technology program is offered online at Seminole State College. If students have problems with a specific topic in the online class, they can come to campus to sit in the lecture in person. SSC calls it a “have it your way” delivery of the class. Attending the campus class is optional. Retention rates in these online courses are the best of the entire college.
• As a result of the training received at 2016 Summer Working Connections, lectures and labs for the wireless section of South Plains College’s “Fundamentals of Networking” course in the Networking certificate were overhauled.
• Because of best practices learned at the 2016 HI TEC conference in Pittsburgh – a trip funded by the CTC – University of North Texas is now preparing to create Competency-Based Learning modules for its introductory CSCE 1030/1040 computer science and engineering courses. Instructor David Keathly will attend further training this summer.
• Because of the training received by faculty members at Working Connections, Waukesha County Technical College was able to create a new course – “Shell Scripting” – and incorporate it into a “Network Specialist” AAS degree. This skill was identified as necessary by a BILT KSA exercise in 2014. They are now using shell scripting for two of their five degree programs. WCTC also created a new “Byte of IT Women” recruiting event. The school brought in four woman leaders in the IT industry with 33 women in attendance for a morning of hands-on learning with databases, customer support, network security, and web page design. While too soon to measure which attendees will enroll for the fall, the event is planned to run again in the fall.
• At the request of their BILT, Wharton County Junior College added a new degree specialty in Cybersecurity including four new courses (“OS Security,” “Intrusion Detection,” “Security Management Practices,” and “Incident Response & Handling”).

Student Quotes

“Before starting the Information Technology program at Cleveland Community College, I knew little to nothing about computers and information technology infrastructure… Because of the strong foundation in IT I built at Cleveland, I have been able to advance from a part-time Information Technologies Tutor to a System Administrator in a short period of time.” – Cleveland Community College student

“By Spring 2016, I had one final course remaining in the IST Bachelor’s program and decided to start sending out resumes. Of all the applications and resumes I submitted, and after getting discouraged by getting filtered out of many because I wasn’t a degree holder yet, the only company that responded was SAP. I interviewed with them and was accepted. As of March 2016, I am now an employee at one of the largest software firms on the globe. And I don’t even have my degree yet!” – Seminole State College student