Paper Authors

Abstract

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

Session 1347

Outreach Degree Completion Program

Michael B. Spektor, Malcolm Grothe, Walter W. Buchanan Oregon Institute of Technology/The Boeing Company/Northeastern University

I. Introduction

In our previous paper entitled “Delivering a Manufacturing Engineering Technology Program to Boeing Company”, in June of 1999, we reported about the mutual educational project between OIT and Boeing.1 In this paper we address the Initial Plan, Memorandum of Understanding, First Academic Quarter, Lessons Learned, and our Future Plan. All of the recommendations from the earlier paper have been achieved during this academic year. However, due to our lack of experience, the Initial Plan and the MOU did not address many organizational issues that actually make the program work. This paper will discuss the challenges that we faced during the first academic year and how we resolved them.

II. Student Body

The program has doubled in size with approximately 110 students who have applied for admission. Boeing assumed that the vast majority of students would have two or more years of college education and requested that OIT provide upper division courses for degree completion. The actual backgrounds of the students showed that less than half have this level of college education. In addition, the lower division course work the students attained in most cases did not meet OIT’s requirements. Examples of lower division courses that are missing from student transcripts include chemistry, physics, material science, math, and writing composition. It was assumed students would be able to get these courses from local community colleges. However, our experience shows that during the 1998-1999 academic year, only a few students were able to complete some of required classes at community colleges.

Severe time conflicts and traffic problems in the Puget Sound area make it unrealistic to expect that students would be able to attend community colleges on a regular basis. Consistency among community colleges makes transferring credits difficult at best and in some cases impossible. Students would be distributed among many community colleges and would lack an OIT peer

• Citation

• Format
  • APA
  • APA - LaTeX bibitem
  • MLA
  • MLA - LaTeX bibitem
  • Bibtex
  • EndNote - RIS

Spektor, M. B., & Grothe, M., & Buchanan, W. (2000, June), Outreach Degree Completion Program Paper presented at 2000 Annual Conference, St. Louis, Missouri. 10.18260/1-2--8613