Growing. Building. Expanding. Those are the economic and workforce goals of successful companies like Texas Instruments Incorporated. Hiring employees who have the technical training and soft skills that move the company forward is critical to that success.
The Dallas County Community College District has set those same goals for economic and workforce education. Building on strong partnerships with companies such as TI is important because it helps students follow education pathways to lucrative fields where they can find good jobs and build their own careers.
A recent pledge of $500,000 from TI to the DCCCD Foundation is a prime example of this kind of industry collaboration. The partnership will provide an associate degree program that serves as a pathway from the classroom to semiconductor manufacturing and to jobs for well-trained technicians.
Richland College is providing $327,000 in grant funding for electronic training consoles from a federal grant it received in 2014 – the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grant from the U.S. Department of Labor. Richland is using funds from the grant to train Texans who require new job skills for immediate employment. Those grant funds support the Veterans-Focused Engineering Technology Project, which helps meet the needs of local veterans and other individuals who seek training to enter or re-enter the local job market. TI is a Richland College VFETP partner.
The DCCCD system is providing $2 million that will be used for building renovations to support the program, bringing the total partnership investment to almost $3 million that supports both workforce training and economic development for the Dallas area.
TI and DCCCD signed a program agreement on Fri., Dec. 4, 2015, at TI’s company headquarters in Dallas.
“TI’s interest in helping to create this program with DCCCD stems from our own need to have a local approach to find top technician talent,” said Steve Lyle, director of engineering, workforce development and university marketing at TI. “We also want to help create a program that will be worthy of veterans who have served our country and are now seeking additional education and training after serving their military assignments. A program that could take their military skillsets and refine or retool them for great civilian jobs by earning an Associate of Applied Sciences degree in electrical engineering technology is a win-win.”
“DCCCD and TI have common goals: to educate students with the skills in electrical engineering technology – including very specific competencies – so that they are prepared to assume the tasks and responsibilities that TI, as a major employer in Dallas, requires. This program will help us bridge the skills gap in Dallas and help people – including veterans – find jobs that pay well,” said Dr. Joe May, DCCCD’s chancellor.
“Building career pathways in electrical engineering technology to semiconductor manufacturing is critical to the success of our students. This highly-visible connection between DCCCD and TI strengthens our program and the relevance of the degree. We are excited to build on our partnership with TI, which benefits our community as well,” May added.
Richland, Eastfield and Mountain View colleges will offer the EET program, which has been designed to provide a consistent learning experience: common degree plans, course syllabi, course objectives, lab experiences, and learning outcomes and competencies.
Why is that structure important? All DCCCD students enrolled in the EET program will be taught the same materials and receive the same training, regardless of location. That process means each student will graduate with the same skills that Texas Instruments needs from its employees.
“We used target competencies identified by the TI Engineering Council as well as its General Technology Knowledge Assessment for our associate degree program in EET,” explained May. “We wanted to make the program general enough to appeal to multiple business partners, which also addresses the needs of TI, as we see in this partnership.”
Future employees in the field of electrical engineering technology need basic skills in reading maintenance manuals and verbal communication; thinking skills for root cause analysis and critical thinking; and personal qualities such as strong ethics, drive and ambition, according to DCCCD planners.
The primary and secondary competencies also help strengthen each EET student’s ability to manage resources and costs; work with broad groups of people; understand the importance of communicating with and teaching others; know how systems operate (for safety and also to understand and repair sub-assemblies in larger systems); and use their technical knowledge of broader tool sets and process tools to do their jobs.
Students enrolled in the EET program take 60 credit hours. All DCCCD EET graduates will be trained to meet the same baseline competencies: DC circuits, AC circuits, discrete components, digital circuits, chemical concepts, physical concepts, industrial controls, power supply concepts, mechanics and electrical/machine shop, and hydraulics and pneumatics.
The electrical engineering technology program also includes secondary competencies in metrology, safety, robotics, mathematics, verbal communication and written communication. Six hours of general education courses complete the curriculum, and students in the program also will have internship opportunities.
