San Antonio, Texas
June 10, 2012
June 10, 2012
June 13, 2012
2153-5965
Engineering Professional Development and Distance Learning Programs
Continuing Professional Development
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25.1139.1 - 25.1139.7
10.18260/1-2--21896
https://strategy.asee.org/21896
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Anthony P. Dalessio is an Assistant Professor of electrical engineering technology at Erie Community College. He earned a B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering from the State University of New York, Buffalo. His teaching interests include analog and digital electronics, wireless communications, and renewable energy.
Elena V. Brewer is an instructor of electrical engineering technology at Erie Community College. She received her Ph.D. in physics from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her teaching interests involve PV systems, circuit analysis, digital electronics, PLCs, and electrical motors and machines, as well as college and technical physics courses.
Running a Successful Department Level Professional Development Program at a Community College with Little Access to College FundingAbstractThree years ago there was an almost complete turnover of faculty in our Electrical EngineeringTechnology department due to retirement, which left behind an outdated program. As newfaculty members were hired, a plan had to be developed to fund professional development forboth faculty and staff, in order to rebuild the program and evaluate current course offerings.Faculty and staff needed to be trained in new technologies, and funding had to be sought forlaboratory upgrades. A number of strategies were employed to fund the faculty professionaldevelopment. The first group of activities focused on taking advantage of as many local andregional opportunities as possible: identifying workshops and seminars at local colleges anduniversities offered by academic departments; attending workshops related to technology transferfrom local research universities to industry; regularly checking websites of the local Chamber ofCommerce and the Convention and Visitor's Bureau for State-wide and national conventions thatmay be related to departmental interests; and involvement with the State-wide EngineeringTechnology association. The second group of activities consisted of capitalizing on contactsmade in previous activities to develop relationships with local companies, attend training on theirproducts, view webinars, as well as work with research faculty on joint grant opportunities. Thethird group of activities centered on joining (or rejoining) national professional organizations,and getting on as many listservs as possible to correspond with peers and learn about fullyfunded opportunities nationwide. The next group involved utilization of listservs to collect dataon professional development strategies from technology faculty from other two-year institutions.The last group was to work with the college's professional development group to attend localeducation related conferences and seminars.The results to date have far exceeded our expectations. We have been able to attend severalnational and international conferences that were held locally, and were able to view several freewebinars from companies that exhibited at those events; have had faculty selected for fourcompletely or partially funded training opportunities on other groups' NSF-ATE funded grantinitiatives; have attended six technology-transfer workshops for under $40 each and attended freetraining on new technology by local companies met at those workshops; gathered enoughinformation via ASEE listservs to publish a paper; attended a number of free seminars at localcolleges and universities; and attended PLC training and an IEEE conference funded through aCarl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act Title IV grant.
Dalessio, A. P., & Brewer, E. V. (2012, June), Running a Successful Department Level Professional Development Program at a Community College with Little Access to College Funding Paper presented at 2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, San Antonio, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--21896
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