National Science Foundation Advanced Technical Education (ATE) Centers - California Regional Consortium for Engineering Advances in Technological Education (CREATE)

 

The California Regional Consortium for Engineering Advances in Technological Education (CREATE) Regional Center is a joint effort between community colleges, universities, and high-tech engineering technology employers.  Hosted at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, CA, CREATE serves over 9,000 square miles of coastal and central California, a population of over one million. 

 

The Center’s goal is to address needs of industry by producing highly skilled and educated technicians to better meet national and State workforce demands in engineering technology fields (including networking and IT).  CREATE focuses on better approaches to faculty development, in pedagogy and content; industry partnership for curricula improvement; 2+2 B.S. program development and articulation; and improving assessment.

 

CREATE was previously funded by two NSF-ATE projects, which met or exceeded all of their objectives, which included curriculum development, enrollment and retention, work-based site experiences, and professional development.  CREATE developed programs that began with a common core curriculum in either engineering technology or computer networking.  The common core curriculum allowed students to transfer from a participating college to any college in the consortium to take classes in any of the specialty areas offered by the consortium campuses.  The collaborative effort between community colleges, universities, and employers has resulted in a strong regional consortium.

 

CREATE has developed and implemented over 50 new engineering/manufacturing/electronics/information technology Associate degree and certificate programs.  These new curricula have resulted in over 200 new courses that integrate academic and vocational subject matter with industry skill standards and/or competencies.  In addition, 153 of the 202 CREATE technology courses have been approved for CSU transfer.  Since Fall 2005, 46 students have matriculated into the new CREATE-sponsored in-person/on-line hybrid 2+2 B.S. The Program in Information Technology at CSU Channel Islands has graduated 12 students as of Spring 2009.

 

Since CREATE’s inception in 1999-2000, over 25,000 students have taken at least one CREATE credit course.  In addition, over 2,100 have successfully completed a technical sequence between 2002 and 2008, and nearly 1,500 students have graduated with an associate’s degree.

The Center, which evolved out of Project CREATE’s successes, established objectives, activities, outcomes, and timelines designed to target the seven chief areas of need or goals the CREATE project identified.  These include teacher preparation, high school feeder linkages, articulation and access, student worksite and internship experiences, curriculum development, curriculum delivery, and longitudinal evaluation of student success.

 

	CREATE is a Cisco Academy Training Center (CATC), which trains instructors for CCNA, Security, Wireless, and IT-Essentials curricula.  Its Regional academies stretch over many of the western United States.  CREATE can help train you to become a Cisco Academy instructor.  Resources include:  News, CATC Multimedia Gallery, CATC Security Instructor Training, Marketing, Events, Curriculum, Local Academy Instructor Training Classes, Training, Universities, Services, Resources, Links and Contacts.
	CREATE’s Technical Teacher Training Center provides professional development workshops to improve teaching for Cisco instructors, and it provides three workshops to improve teaching for all teachers: Teaching Skills (18 hours) is based on “microteaching.” Participants learn and demonstrate basic elements of presenting a lesson. Teaching Demonstration (8 hours) moves the student from theory to practice. Teaching in the Community College (15 hours) exposes participants to a variety of teaching techniques and issues unique to the 2-year comprehensive public college. CREATE also teaches instructors to teach these courses.
	CREATE’s Resources online includes links to CREATE consortium courses, degrees and certificates, event calendar, web links,  maps, media galleries, news, message exchange, meeting records, publications and reports.
	Create-online.net is a separate website providing access to engineering and computer technologies resources, including:  engineering education resources, professional training opportunities, engineering jobs, discounted books, college search sites, engineering projects, job placement tests, engineering courses, and online universities.  ICT educators may be particularly interested in the computer networking section.

 

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