WCC Showcase Series: Math, Science & Engineering Technology
Good evening, everybody. My name is Steve Bloomfield, and I serve as the Manager for Recruitment and Outreach here at Washtenaw Community College. I definitely want to welcome all of you here today for our presentation on math, science, and engineering this academic division. And all of the good stuff within it is going to be discussed tonight.
I do want to say, though, as we start off that this is a showcase event. It's the last of six sessions that we've done through the month of April. And so with the showcase, they're going to talk about a lot of different things tonight. And you may have one specific area of interest. And so I just want to say in the beginning of the event, if they touch on something you're interested in but you don't feel like you've got enough information, you've got some great people here tonight you can ask questions in the chat.
We'll answer those questions there in that area, but we'll also be available. You'll get our contact information, and we'll be able to answer any questions that you may have, moving forward. So don't worry if you don't get all the information that you need tonight or if you'd like to learn more. We will definitely help you with that process. So as I said, this is the last of six sessions. Our presentations have been thus far focused on our five academic divisions and online learning.
And one of the things I did want to let you know is that we're currently getting the previous sessions, what do you call it? Closed caption so that we can put them on the web page. And so when this one's done tonight, it will also be recorded, and we're going to put this one on the web page. And then we're going to send all of our folks who've showed up or signed up for these events the links so that they'll be able to look at whatever academic division they want, or if there is information in this session tonight that you really liked or appreciated and want to look at again, that you'll be able to get to it. So stay tuned for all of that.
Before I get started in introducing Amy and Dean Vega, I just wanted to talk about the format for today. Really appreciate that everybody has their cameras off and their mics. That really helps us if there's going to be a few videos shown today. And we always worry about bandwidth. And so if those are off, it helps with the quality of the presentation and we don't typically have as issues with videos and the like. So I appreciate you doing that.
Again, the chat is right there. Any questions along the way, please feel free to type it in. And also know at the end of the event today that we'll have a short period for questions and answers. So that is also built in.
A couple of different things, we're going to have the divisional presentation and then Domonique Palmer, who works on my staff, who is one of our recruitment specialists, she's also the liaison for this academic division. So for any of you out there tonight that are in the enrollment process or interested in applying, she has a brief presentation that she's going to offer. And then we have a really cool thing going on at the end. We're going to introduce a new partnership that the college has with Fame.
And we have a representative here tonight who's going to be able to present on that. His name's Jake Sponsler, and he has a really brief two-minute video to show you. So with that, I think I'm going to turn it over to Amy and Dean Vega and let them introduce themselves and take it away. Welcome, everybody.
My name is Amy Carpenter. I'm the Instructional Support Coordinator for the Math, Science, and Engineering Division. And with us is Dean Victor Vega. We'll get into a little bit more of our introductions once we start the PowerPoint. Victor, would you like to say a couple of words? Yeah, welcome, everybody.
Pleasure for you to join us this afternoon, a beautiful afternoon and excited to show you what Amy and the group has prepared for everybody here. And I hope you enjoy it, and I'll be monitoring the chat. In case you have any questions, please feel free to put on the chat. And we're going to find the answer for you. Welcome, everyone.
We would like to start off today by thanking you all for taking the time to join us to learn more about the Math, Science, and Engineering Technology Division and our role here at Washtenaw Community College. My name is Amy Carpenter, and I'm the Instructional Support Coordinator for the division. In my role, I assist the dean, department faculty and the other college staff to coordinate the academic operations within the division. Joining me today, we have Dean Victor Vega. Victor Vega received his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Iowa. He has been serving as the Dean of the Math, Science, and Engineering Tech Division at WCC for three years.
Previously to WCC, Dr. Vega was Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Glenville State College and Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at the College of Coastal Georgia. With many years of teaching, Dr. Vega
is an advocate for STEM education and has worked for years in the implementation and adoption of OERs among other initiatives. He focused on student success and ways to increase retention and graduation efforts for our students. In today's showcase session, we'll do an overview of the departments, the programs, and the team members that make up the division as a whole. We will share information about the MSE success team and how they can help you, whether you are a current or future student. We will give an overview of the STEM Scholars Program, a program which we are very proud of. We will share information about some of the events that we host and/or support.
We will give you a glimpse into scholarship opportunities here at WCC. We'll also share some information about our articulation agreements that we have with our university partners. And lastly, we'll turn the session over to you in case you have any questions for us. So let's get started. At WCC we have a mission, and the mission is very strong.
The MSE team tries to honor our mission, our values, and our vision. The college strives to make a positive difference in people's lives through accessible and excellent educational programs and services. We provide a caring open door teaching and learning environment.
We provide excellent teaching, counseling, and support services. We reach out to people who have limited income or other barriers to success. We enable people to progress in their academic and career pursuits. We work in partnership with the communities in which we serve. And in addition to the mission, I mentioned that we have our values, and our values are very strong as well.
Teaching and learning, we embrace teaching and learning as our central purpose. Support, we make every effort to help learners achieve success. Diversity, we respect differences in people and in their ideas. Partnerships, we plan to work together with respect, trust and honesty within the college and the communities we serve.
Innovation, we seek the best possible ways to conduct our work. Our vision is very clear. [AUDIO OUT] Student success, our students come first.
We're committed to their learning, success, and satisfaction. Community success, we are committed to community learning, success, and satisfaction. Staff success, we are committed to staff learning. In addition to our missions, values, and vision at the college, we also have a brand anthem. And our brand anthem goes like this.
Everyone's reason for coming to WCC is different and yet the results are so similar. The reason may be to start a new career path or strengthen an existing one. To establish a foundation for future academic study at a four-year college. To fulfill a dream or follow a passion to a rewarding outcome. Whatever the reason, the result is always a new and interesting chapter in a life story. We all have our something next and WCC is the means to achieve it.
We teach, we encourage, we guide, we support, we inspire. Life has many chapters. We're here to help you start your next one. The MSE Division has a nickname, and we like to call ourselves the Dream Team. We call ourselves this for two reasons.
We love working together, and we love what we do. I already introduced you to Dr. Vega, or just with me as well as myself. But we have many other members that make up the academic operations in the division and make it a success. Let me go ahead and introduce you to the team Toni Ellicott, Toni is the dean's right hand. Her role is the Administrative Assistant to the Dean of Math, Science, and Engineering Technologies.
She started at the college in March of '86, working in financial services. Toni started working full time later on in November of '89. And she was working for the Director of Continuing Education and Extension services. And a few years later, she began working for the Dean of Evening Extension and Learning Support Services. She has been a part of the MSE Division for the last three years at the college and enjoys working with the MSE staff, faculty, and students. And she especially loves being a part of the Dream Team.
Thank you for all you do, Toni. In addition to Toni, we have the amazing Kwami Williams and Melinda Harrison. And they are the MSE administrative assistant support team. Kwami Williams has been at the college for a total of 20 years. She helps out with student and faculty needs while finding fun ways to connect with staff to support team building. One of the things she likes most about her role is interacting with the students and the people that she works with.
She enjoys being nifty and resourceful, and we just love that about her. In addition, she loves being a GG and is Michigan Wolverines number one fan, hands down. Kwami, thank you for all you do. Melinda Harrison, she recently joined the MSE Division in October of 2021. And previously, she worked in the health science division for 16 years.
She's been at WCC for a total of 21 years. She really enjoys assisting her math and physics faculty and instructional support coordinator. And I appreciate her helping me all the things that she helps me with.
Thank you. Thank you, Melinda. She really appreciates seeing the compassion that faculty have with their students and their success. Last but not least, she really loves working with the MSE coworkers with events and learning new mathematical trivia. Thanks again, team.
In addition to [AUDIO OUT] team, we have our dedicated professional faculty that play a key role in student success. We wouldn't be here without our amazing faculty. If you take a look at this slide, you can see the majority of the full-time faculty that served within the MSE Division. In addition to these professionals, we have many part-time faculty members that help our students with their academic goals.
Thank you for all that you do. Moving on to the next slide, you can see the organizational chart of our division and how it's broken down, with Dr. Vega at the top the, support staff in the middle and then our four departments that make up the division as a whole. You'll see that we have chemistry, life sciences, also known as biology, mathematics, and physical sciences.
As MSE Division, we play a major role with the general education requirements for all the certificates and degrees here at Washtenaw Community College. Here's a glimpse at the possible academic pathways that you can choose within our division. We have engineering and design technology, pre-engineering science transfer, environmental science, exercise science, general education in math and natural sciences, math and science with a focus on biology, chemistry, or mathematics. Here's another view of the certificates and degrees within the division.
And we'll go ahead and share this PowerPoint with you after we are done with today's session just so you have all the materials as a reference going forward. Now it's time to meet the success team, the MSE success team. At WCC, our students are at the core of what we do. We care about student successes and want to help every student to reach their full potential and achieve their goals. Sometimes students may need more support, guidance or assistance in achieving their goals. The math, science, and engineering technology success team is here to support, guide, and assist you while working together with our faculty, our advisors, our librarians, tutors, counselors, success coaches, and staff.
All right, so let me tell you a little bit about our roles and what we do. We have our welcome team, and they're available to work with students throughout the day-to-day operations or to help them with any questions that they may have. They are equipped to handle questions with admissions, registration, transcripts. They're able to help you find answers to questions and then connect you to the next correct person. We have our academic advisors. And they provide professional advising to assist with understanding degree requirements by selecting a program or degree pathway.
They can help you with mapping out which classes to take and when to take them and help you with navigating transfer guides. And our transfer guides can be a little tricky. Our advisors know their stuff. Your academic advisor can also help you with exploring career pathways, resources, classes, and options for your academic plan as a whole.
Communicate with your advisor in plenty of time to get the help you need to choose your classes and register on time every semester. We have dedicated success coaches, and they provide a holistic personalized one-on-one support to our students. They are a great resource to help you navigate obstacles that might impede your success. They can connect you to campus services and resources while working with you to develop goals. They will be your accountability partner, and they can provide academic pro tips for maximizing your college experience. They can help students to hone in skills and time management, study skills, goal setting motivation.
They're a guide to help students with accessing campus resources and services. In addition to those team members, we have the learning resources team. And they support the student success with expertise assistance from librarians and tutors. We have lead tutors that are assigned by discipline to the students with the appropriate academic interventions to maximize success. These academic interventions include tutoring, study groups, workshops and other self-guided learning resources.
The library provides access to many digital resources and services. The digital resources include research databases from newspapers, magazines, trade and scholarly articles as well as ebooks and streaming videos. The librarians conduct research, instruction sessions for courses across the curriculum, and they create research guides specific to course and successful completion of assignments. Librarians provide research help through chat, email, and phone as well as book a librarian for one-on-one virtual consultation for help on all assignments, projects, and speeches.
We have faculty members who teach courses in the students program of interest, and they are here for mentorship, additional support with careers, networking, and academic opportunities. On top of all this, we have the dean's office, Dr. Vega. The dean office is here to support all the initiatives and programming related to the success team.
We're here to support the students, faculty, and staff and to coordinate the success team. Special thanks to Dr. Vega and Alexi McCracken, our MSE advisor for creating this amazing program map document. This personalized document will give students a clear path to their academic journeys.
You'll be able to see your courses that you need to complete and obtain your certificate or degree here at WCC while checking off your progress as you move forward towards completion. We strongly recommend that you make an appointment with our dedicated advisor Alexi to start your own personalized program map. This will bring you one step closer to your academic goals.
And then here we're moving on to our departments. And here are some images of the fossils and some of the equipment that you'll see in the physical science labs. Special thanks to physical science lab tech, Lourdes, for sharing these pictures with us. And then on this slide, you'll see some really cool pictures of some of the biology life science equipment and some of the adventures that students have taken in their courses. Special thanks to faculty member David Wooten and our life science lab tech Karen Poslaiko for sharing these cool images with us. Many thanks.
All right, did you know that WCC is one of the few colleges in the state with a cadaver lab? I did not. Specimens are released through the University of Michigan Anatomical Donation Program for one year. WCC has a total of two to three specimens in various states. Every fall and winter, 12 students are invited to register for BIO 199 anatomical studies course. Instructors permission is required to register.
Superior performance in Bio 111 and a letter of recommendation from your Bio 111 instructor is a requirement for consideration. This course in lab gives you a unique opportunity as an undergrad. Undergraduate students rarely have this option for this level of education. The lab provides practical experience that reinforces learning.
In addition, this course provides understanding of how all the bodies are unique as well as seeing the effects of disease firsthand. While models and textbooks can describe common conditions, there are significant differences from one human to the next. The cadaver provides students with these naturally occurring variances from person to person, and they are able to see firsthand what makes us unique. We also wanted to mention that there is the appreciation of the donor.
One of the most valuable learning experiences students will take away from the cadaver lab is how to conduct themselves in a respectful, ethical, and professional manner. Students soon realize the charitable irreplaceable gift that donors and their families have made to help us with our studies. Now we're getting to one of my favorite departments within the division, and that is chemistry. And we're going to go ahead and take about nine minutes here to watch a chemistry video. Special thanks to Dr. Tracy and Eric Schwab for providing the video content for us.
Here we go with the cool chemistry video. Really large. So with that, Dr. Schwab, it's yours.
Hi, everybody. Hi, everybody. As Dr. Victor Vega said, we're doctors Tracy and Eric Schwab. Yes, we're married. Right.
We both work together at WCC, and we're happy to be on campus today. We're so excited, yay! So you can see our sweatshirts, WCC tungsten carbon carbon, very cool. So what we're going to do because I know we're on absence of time here is we're going to show you some really cool experiments, OK? So what we're going to do first, and I know that we're on a time limit here, so I'll do this a little bit more quickly than we typically would, we're going to be on me. OK, so the idea is I'm sure that most of you have probably seen fireworks and have probably wondered what causes fireworks to have the colors that they do. So you'll notice here we're going to dim the lights here in a second. I have a Bunsen burner on, but we're going to dim the lights here so you can see it.
And I have what's called a platinum wire. So we have students do this in the lab. Certain metals exude certain colors.
So we're going to do potassium, which is an element. Now, potassium is pretty fast. So you're going to see a purple color there in that.
You can see that purple flame in there. Chemists use this all the time to determine what elements are present in certain compounds. So we're going to do a couple more here. Calcium, if you guys ever see orange fireworks, that's typically calcium. So you can see the orange a little bit there. Now, typically, we do clean the wires in between samples.
But in the absence of time, I won't be doing that. We're going to do copper here, which is a pretty blue typically, kind of, bluish green. It's a little contaminated. And then last but not least, is strontium, which is a cool red. So again, if you're ever watching fireworks, you can see the cool red come from strontium if you can see the red there.
And this is due to electrons that are moving between their atomic orbitals. So if you take chemistry at WCC, you'll be doing this. And we'll go into a little bit more exactly how this happens, OK? Now, since chemistry we cannot see atoms, ions, and molecules, we don't have microscopes that are big enough to show us all of that. We have to have a way to indicate to a scientist that we can either see or feel that a chemical reaction has taken place. So I have a couple here that we're going to do here for you, OK. So I have-- the lights are going to be flicking on here.
You can see that it is a purple solution here. This is potassium permanganate. I'm going to be dropping in-- so one of the indicators that we do, folks, is a color change. So you can see that it's purple. I've got to try to move my hand so you guys can see it. Going to add some sodium hydroxide to this.
And what I want you guys to notice is a chemical reaction can also be shown by a color change. I've got to add a little bit more. So you can see that the purple has gone a little bit green. OK, so again, a color change. So you can start a chemical reaction with one color, and it can change to another color.
That's also an indicator to a scientist that a chemical reaction has taken place. Another thing is the absence of color. So again, I'm going to show you this potassium permanganate. We're going to add some hydrochloric acid to this. This is a chemical reaction that we actually have our first semester general chemistry students do.
OK, and then we're going to add a little bit of sodium sulfite. And you can see here how the solution goes clear. So again, you can have one color going to another color, or you can have a color becoming clear, pretty cool, OK? Now, another indicator that we can do in the lab is the formation of bubbles.
So I have here a tube of HCl, and I'm going to put a piece of zinc in there. I got to get another piece. It's too big. I didn't think to check to see if it could fit in there.
There you go. And you can see there, see all the bubbles forming up at the sides of the tube here. So that's another indicator to scientists that a chemical reaction has taken place, OK? Now, another reaction that we do here at WCC is involving metals as you just saw here but metal plating. So I had to start this one before the session started because it takes a few minutes for it to build. So what I did was I took a piece of magnesium that you can see here. It looks shiny.
I put it into a solution of zinc chloride, and hopefully, you'll be able to see this. You have a chemical reaction in which the metal has plated some black coating. So if you zoom in here, you'll see that there's some black pieces floating around. So what happens is as this chemical reaction proceeds, we can see some bubbles coming off there.
You can see the black coating. This is called metal plating. And so this is the idea, again, indicator that a chemical reaction has taken place. So I have one more reaction to show you, but it's a little bit stinky. So we have to move to the fume hood over here. And this is one of the favorites that students like to see.
So I have a solution here, very concentrated nitric acid. Since it's concentrated, we want to make sure that we're in [INAUDIBLE] Now, I'm going to drop in here some copper wire. And now what I want to show you is this produces a super cool orange gas. You can see the solution turn green. But you see here, you could sight, guys, see the orange gas is creeping up the sides of the test tube.
And if you let it go long enough, it will actually come out the test tube and then the click system will ventilate it away. So again, kind of cool to see the bubbling, especially when you can see a color change with the gas being produced there. So I'm going to flip it over to my husband, and he's going to show you some other cool stuff. Hey, everybody. So the first thing I'm going to do, I want to talk a little bit about gases.
And we go over this a lot in our first semester of chemistry because they're very important in chemistry and in life in general. For example, I'm going to just-- I have a little bit of water in this can and, I'm just going to start heating up while I'm talking. The pressure of a can of air in the atmosphere on a square meter of Earth is about 10,000 kilograms. That's about nine blocks of regular tire, right? That's so much weight that's pressing down on you.
That's about six 2019 Mustang GT, to give you an example. So normally, you'll notice the gas molecules are all moving at the same speed, and the pressure equals out. What I'm doing here is I'm heating up some water in a can and the pressure builds. It's driving out the slow moving molecules and those fast moving water molecules are pushing out from the outside. Now, this is what the atmosphere does. There's a little pool of ice here.
It was just atmospheric pressure that crashed this can, OK? The pressure on the inside, because the water molecules are moving really fast and pressing on the walls of the can, lower the pressure inside. When I put it into ice water, it immediately cooled them down. They started moving slower, and now the outside pressure, the atmospheric pressure as you can see did a pretty good job on this can, OK? So the next thing I'm going to show you has to do with reaction. Now, I have some hydrogen peroxide. And everybody probably has a bottle of hydrogen peroxide at home. And over time what happens is the hydrogen peroxide breaks down into water and oxygen.
It takes a really long time, and that's really no fun. So we've got here some hydrogen peroxide. Hydrogen peroxide is not blue.
I've added a little bit of blue dye so you can see what happens and some dish soap. So I'm going to add this one to speed up a reaction. We have something called a catalyst. And the catalyst is just usually another chemical or metal that speeds up the reaction but doesn't interfere with it.
I'm going to add a little bit of iodide to this and give it a second. Now, what the iodide is doing is speeding up the breakdown of the hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen. The soap I put in or the dish soap I put in it just makes the bubble, it makes it look really cool, OK. And so the blue in here, this will go for a while. That's one way to speed up a reaction by getting a simple chemical like potassium iodide and we get reactions like this, OK? And that's it. So I hope you enjoyed these couple of demonstrations.
And just bear with us one second while I get the PowerPoint back up, please. In addition to speaking with your dedicated advisor about your program map and academic journey, we would also recommend that you speak with them about the math pathways here at WCC. As you can see at a glance from the next two slides, first one showing now, there's a difference in your levels of math and the progress you can make for completion of your math school here at WCC. Looking at this pathway, you can see what requirements are needed for the STEM and health science pathways and then turn [AUDIO OUT] next slide, you'll see the non STEM pathway.
Please note that you do not need as high of a math level to get your certificate or degree here at Washtenaw Community College unless you are a STEM major. So get your appointment with Alexi, and then she can walk you through your personalized path for math completion here at WCC. Only WCC offers SmartPairs. These specifically chosen seven-week online courses will allow you to rapidly make progress towards your transfer goal. With SmartPairs, you can focus on one class at a time to complete double the transferable credits in a semester.
And that's as a part-time student. You can focus on two classes at a time with a full-time schedule. SmartPairs are not only offered in science and math, but they're also offered an English, business, social science, and humanities. You can check out this link once we share this PowerPoint with you to learn more about your SmartPairs. Open educational resources, you might recall that I mentioned earlier that Dean Victor Vega has worked for years in the implementation and adoption of OERs.
And you might be wondering what OERs are. OERs stands for Open Educational Resources, and they are teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no cost access, use, adoption, and re-distribution by others with no or limited restrictions. All in all, OERs save you money. You can check out this link, and it'll show you all the courses at WCC that are taking advantage of the OERs to save you money.
Ah, the Michigan Transfer Agreement, MTA, this was designed to facilitate the transfer of general education requirements from one institution to another. Students may complete the MTA as part of the associate's degree or as a standalone package at a Michigan community college. Choosing to follow MTA will give students the opportunity to almost transfer seamlessly to our partner universities. Be sure to schedule a meeting with an advisor to learn more about your MTA pathway.
Articulation agreements, they are basically the formal process of reviewing courses for equivalency between a community college and university. Using an articulation agreement saves students time and money. In some cases, you're able to do a two plus two, two years at the community college and two years at the university.
In other cases, you can do a three plus one, three years at the community college and one at the university. And might I mention that you'll be earning the same degree as you would be if you completed four years at the university. And right here you can take a look at our WCC University partners that we work with to create these articulation agreements. Dual enrollment, dual enrollment at a glance. Not sure how many of you are high school students, but did you know that students can carefully plan with their high school counselors to attend high school and college at the same time to earn an associate's degree along with their high school diplomas? If this sounds of interest to you, we would strongly encourage you to get an appointment with your counselor ASAP to take advantage of this amazing opportunity. Scholarships, here's a list of some possible scholarships that students can apply for to help aid in the cost of college.
The WCC Foundation gives more than 1,000 scholarships away every year to incoming and current students based on a combination of financial need and merit. We also have scholarships that directly support high school students with honors. We have the President's Honor scholarship, the Procassini Honor scholarship as well as Excellence scholarship. In addition to those, we have divisional scholarships for our current WCC students. You'll need to meet the following requirements to apply. You have to have 30 credit hours, at least a 3.3 GPA,
and you must live in Washtenaw County. Please note application deadlines requirements vary by scholarship opportunities. And so make sure you go to our website wccnet.edu/scholarships to learn more about these scholarships and what you need to do to fill the requirements to apply.
Next we're going to head on to the STEM Scholars Program here at WCC. We're very proud of this program and give special thanks to professional faculty Susan Dentel for the creation and implementation of this program. Susan can speak to this so much better than I can as this is her baby. She dreamed this and made it happen.
And so many students have had many advantages due to her hard work and dedication. I'll go ahead and give a little overview of the program. But like I mentioned, it's way better hearing from Susan.
So if you are interested in this program, I would encourage you to reach out directly to Susan. The WCC STEM Scholars Program was created to encourage, support, and facilitate success for students seeking degrees in STEM disciplines. The program was developed to offer WCC STEM scholars comprehensive social, academic, and financial support.
Our program began in the fall of 2018 although a lot of work went into it prior to us launching. We're very proud to say that we're now welcoming our fifth cohort of students this coming July 2022. Some of the components of the program are summer intensive, our weekly luncheon learns, and team building activities.
Our STEM scholars have their own peer tutoring, a dedicated advisor, a dedicated success coach as well as mentors. The scholars have the option to attend professional conferences, and they have research internship opportunities. And then a little bit more information, every July our new cohort participates in a three-week summer intensive. The intensive prepare students on multiple levels for their first two years at WCC and then for a successful transfer to their university. The summer intensive includes university visits, study and life skill preparation, career exploration, time management, wellness, financial literacy, team building, multicultural awareness, leadership training, activities to increase overall college readiness.
In addition, students learn about themselves by doing personality assessments. Our scholars are also given three books-- Working Smarter, Not Harder, Designing Your Life, and On Course, Study Skills Plus. These books will help our students develop new outlooks and skills, and they will also complete discussion boards with their teammates to demonstrate what they're learning along the way. Our weekly luncheon learns that I mentioned take place every Friday of the academic calendar. Our program has a new topic each week during these luncheon learn sessions.
We have a strong emphasis on learning about research and do a whole component during these weekly luncheon learns. Team building activities, students learn about the intersection of teams, how to collaborate with others, how to work through conflict within themselves and others, how to network with others, interdependence, seeking out others for help early and often. Much of our work also involves life skills building to help students develop the critical skills of self efficiency, communication, self responsibility, self esteem, critical thinking, problem solving skills, leaderships, perseverance, and grit.
Some of our scholars have utilized a local research called Maker's Works, where they will learn more about the Bridgeport mills, CMC mill, 3D printers, assembling tests, repairing electronics, engravers and many other cool tools and equipment. In addition, they'll prepare a paper and a poster presentation to present to our STEM community. Special thanks to Josh over at Maker Works for the partnership.
Our scholars also have the option to attend professional conferences, and many of our students have taken advantage of this. The conference experience for undergraduate students allows students to go through the process of preparing another poster and presentation to share with the STEM community. And even if the students do not have a project that comes of these conferences, the experience alone accomplishes so much. Students can see how research is presented, learn about the poster presentations, and the certain parts that go into a scientific paper. It also gives students a chance to meet with other college students who are attending the conferences and doing the research.
Students have increased self-confidence and higher motivation to continue their difficult STEM studies and classes and transfer. So the conferences are really, really good for our students. The application and selection process is pretty smooth. High school juniors and seniors and current college students are able to apply for the program. It's a mixed variety of our students.
You have to have a GPA of 2.7 in high school or GPA of 2.0 at the college level. Students must submit two letters of recommendation in order to be considered for the program as well. The annual application deadline is the second Monday in February for the upcoming summer intensive and fall cohort. Our selection team uses a well developed system to rank applicants based on their GPA, their STEM extracurricular work, and the quality of the essays, and recommendation letters. Once students are selected, they receive information about the acceptance and the expectations for the program, as well as potential scholarships, as these vary by case to case.
You can learn more about the program by going to wccnet.edu/stemscholars. Events, one of the main things I do on my role here at the college, and I love to host and support many different events. And so looking at this, you can see a list of some of the events that we host as a division or support within the college. We encourage you to get involved with any of these that may be of interest to you. We host donuts with the deans where all the instructional deans get together, hang out, have donuts, mingle with the students.
We host our own drop in with the dean. And we just had our last one on Pi Day since my dean, Dean Victor Vega is a mathematician. We just wrapped up STEAM Week 2022, and we actually partnered with our teammates and our colleagues with their campus explore. And we're hoping that this will be a combined event going forward.
Our next one will be March 2023. We also host Super STEAM Saturday sessions. And these are geared towards middle school students. We run one a month year round, but all are encouraged to attend. We do different workshops on STEM-based activities, and there are a lot of fun.
We also partner with the University of Michigan to host events on how to successfully transfer to the college of engineering or medical school. We support the annual climate summit. We also work with Scott Heister from MiSTEM with the Educator of the Year Awards. We have information stations around campus that help students, new students get familiar with the campus.
We also work with industry to bring professionals into the classroom, so you can learn about careers. We work with Student Activities for Welcome Day. That's a lot of fun. I would encourage you to go to Welcome Day if you have not already. You have all the departments and divisions, there's swag food.
It's a great time. And Student Activities host that twice a year. As a division, we also adopt a family around the holidays, the winter holidays. And we're really proud of that. And we also do a lot of events on campus that support the United Way campaign, a great cause that gives money to the community.
All right, we want to give a special plug to Dr. Emily Thompson and the Sustainable Literacy Task Force committee for all their hard work that they do here at WCC. Because of their work, we are a bee friendly campus of USA. We are also a bike friendly campus. This team hosts different events throughout the year. They do Earth Day, special activities.
They actually established a seed library within the Bailey Library. They have a food forest, and they just do so much more. So special thanks to Dr. Emily Thompson
and the rest of the committee for their hard work and effort. As we're getting to the end of our of today's session, we wanted to share at least one of our alum's stories with you. So once you have this PowerPoint, you can go ahead and click on the bottom live link here, and it'll take you to Aisha's website, where you can learn more about her. But in a nutshell, Aisha Bowe is somebody that we're extremely proud of. She is the founder and CEO of STEM Board, and she is an aerospace science engineer that actually was at NASA.
I want to share a quote that Aisha shared with us just for a little inspiration. And Bowe states, "The quality of education at WCC is top notch. You can come here and transition to the best universities in the nation and the best programs in the world.
Sometimes that gets lost. I like to elevate that and the role that it played in my life," end of quote. Special thanks to Aisha for all that she does for our current and former students. Thank you for taking the time to learn about the MSE Division. Be sure to check us out on our social feeds, like us on Facebook and Instagram.
And with that, we will turn it over to you. We're short on time, so I don't know if you have any questions. But you can see our emails are directly on here that you can follow back up with. Thank you, guys. Oh, I thought there were going to be more. Are we leaving this opportunity for questions? I know we had some in the chat box, but were there any additional questions anyone had before we move on to the next portion? If you have any questions right now and think about a question later, you can either contact Dominic or Steven or Amy or myself directly, and we'll be more than happy to answer any questions you may have at any time.
All right then. Well, thank you for that. So we are going to move on to the next portion. I'm just going to briefly let you know some steps it takes to become a student.
Can you all see my screen correctly, like, the presentation? Thumbs up, no? Not yet. No? OK, so I must have shared the wrong screen. Let me turn it off. There it is. Oh.
Oh, it just disappeared. I turned off because I thought you didn't see. Yeah, it disappeared so.
OK, one second. All right, well, we thank you for sticking here with us. Hey, Domonique, I'm still not seeing it. Oh, maybe it's delaying like the last time. Yeah, I don't know if others can see it. No.
OK. Put it on the other screen. Yeah, there it is. You're good. Getting started with it. Thank you all for sticking with us as mentioned.
Thank you for the great questions, and we definitely appreciate your time here tonight. So I will be following up with students who decided to participate. There was a couple of students that I asked for your first and last name just so I can get your email just so I can follow up with more information that you are interested in becoming a student. So a lot of this information was already covered.
And I know I didn't introduce myself, so I'm Domonique Palmer, one of the recruiters here at Washtenaw. So we offer for students who are interested, we offer certificates and also associate programs. So those are primarily the certificate programs typically can take up to a year or two complete depending on if you're a full-time student. And those associate programs can take up to two years, sometimes quicker or sometimes a little bit longer.
So if any of the things that were discussed today in the presentation was of interest, you have an opportunity to expand on that knowledge even further. So I don't want to be too long winded. However, we offer tons of resources for our students. These are available free for you as a student. The only one that is not included in your tuition price will be our health and fitness center.
However, I know we were primarily focusing on those STEM fields. Let's say you are not-- you feel like you're not a strong writer, you will like support on that, in that we offer a Writing Center. We offer laptop loners, internet hot spot, emergency grants for students. There are so many different ones here that I can talk about this all day long. But I don't want to be too long winded. And then if any of this sounds of interest to you if you want to go forward with that next step, the application is online, completely free at wccnet.edu.
So whether you are returning to college and say, you already received a degree, say you're coming straight out of high school, or let's say you are in high school currently and you would like to start on your college level courses, you can do dual enrollment and then also our international students. So when you go to apply, you will choose the application that specifically for you. And like I said, I am going to reach out to you after this presentation just to individually support each student who may have interest. So the steps are relatively simple. You're going to apply. You're going to set up your net ID, yeah, I said that correctly.
You're going to get your academic placement levels. There are different ways you can do so. And then also potentially attend orientation, register for courses, and then these are the other steps that I will follow up with you for. And I know Steve mentioned this already, but this is my contact information. My email address, I said I am Domonique Palmer, so feel free to reach out to me as well. I know some students actually attended some of our other showcase, so I haven't been able to contact them already.
But yes, I do plan to reach out to you. However, feel free to do the same, because I know some people I don't have their first and last name. So is it questions in the chat box? Or are there questions? Yeah, there are a few actually. Victor, Amy, I don't know if you can hear me on this, but we've got a couple of questions in the chat right now. If you can-- I'm on it. I'm typing.
OK, I figured you were. So yeah, we'll keep-- OK, so are just going to answer in the chat box? Yeah, we'll just keep doing that, and then at the very end, if anybody has any questions, we'll open it up. All right, perfect.
Well, I hope that you screenshot this or wrote it down. We are going to move to our final aspect of this presentation. Again, thank you for holding on for so long, but we have special presenters in the room.
I don't know, Steve, you want to introduce them? Yeah, I'll jump on it, Domonique. Thank you very much. And so you have the last portion of this. We have a really cool new partnership that's going on starting in fall '22 that is offer some incredible opportunity for people interested in science manufacturing technology and the like. And so I have Jake Sponsler here who represents FAME, and he's going to talk about the slide.
He also has a two-minute video. And Jake, if you'd like, just let Domonique know when you want to play it, and she'll go from there. OK, sounds great. Thank you. Hey, everybody. My name is Jake Sponsler.
I'm the Vice President of a company called Orbitform in Jackson, Michigan that makes forming and fastening equipment and automation systems. We are engaged with a program called FAME, and we're supporting it from an employer standpoint. So the fact that an employer is here pitching an educational platform can give you some flavor into the draw or the demand in the workplace for it. What FAME is it's basically a work study program that takes folks that want to move into a technical field. And it applies a Toyota-based system to try and develop world class advanced manufacturing technicians.
So that might be, in our case, it would be a service technician to go on the road and to service our equipment. For other manufacturing facilities, that might be a maintenance technician. This program is really good at a leadership building foundation. So a lot of these individuals move into elevated positions in these companies as well. Very strong program, we feel very strongly about building. And the way the program works is basically, you have a sponsor company that you work with, and they pay you three days a week, and you go to class full-time two days a week.
So long couple of days at school, but it does consolidate the learning and do a couple of things. Like I said, there's a lot of information there on the slide. I'll put my email address and the contact information. But Meg Wallace with Toyota is another sponsoring individual that's been working hard on this. She developed this slide and has done a lot of work behind the scene to help promote the program.
So that's the basics of the program. I guess we'll go to the video that gives an outline of some further stuff. But it's hard to-- I know we're on a little bit of a time crunch here, but it's hard to get all of the information. Yeah, and that is a good point. The deadline on there has been extended into the middle of May. It's not April 25.
So watch the video and then if there's any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. But like I said, I'll put my contact information in the chat and myself or Meg are more than happy to answer any questions from anybody after the fact that they come up. All right, so we'll play the video. Let me know if you can hear it. [MUSIC PLAYING] Never stepped in manufacturing. It's amazing to me.
Being in this program, it allowed me like a second opportunity in life. I really like the avenues and the different pathways that I could follow with FAME AMT. I was able to achieve something I always wanted to do before.
When I was in high school, I was in the robotics team. And when I found out that I could actually be in the industry working and showing somewhat of my skills, it caught my attention. My name is Kyle Poole, and I'm part of the Greater Louisville, Kentucky FAME Chapter. My name is [? Diane Bounyalak. ?]
I'm a graduate of Texas FAME, Alamo Chapter. My name is [? Christ Matos. ?] And I'm part of the Greater Louisville FAME Chapter. I think of myself as a creator for the simple fact that we make things day in and day out.
Manufacturing to me, it's something I'm passionate about now. And I feel like I love being on my feet. I like to work with the equipment hands-on. It gives me a better understanding, take my skills what I learned from here and apply it to work. So the advanced manufacturing center has been crucial in the learning of all these different skills. Manufacturing core exercises really helped me learn about safety and how to be safe on the job.
I'm more confident in speaking at work. I'm able to share my ideas. There's a lot to learn. So to have somebody that is willing to teach you and take you under their wing to do things properly and how to actually be successful in this job makes a big difference. If I was in high school and I was able to get in a program like Texas FAME, I'd definitely jump on it.
I'm going to be the second in my family to have a college degree, and they're really proud of me. It's something I can carry on to different companies and grow more. My name is [? Diane Bounyalak. ?]
[? Chris Matos ?] [? Carl Poole. ?] Kyle Poole. And I am a creator. And I am a creator. [MUSIC PLAYING] Thank you. Yeah, so the reason that we would present here is that we have a partnership with WCC through one of their technical programs, so great education there.
I started my educational experience in a math, science, and engineering program at a different community college, but it definitely was a big starting point for me and definitely helped me along the way. So I hope there's some interest, and I appreciate everybody's time. Thank you, Jake. I appreciate you and Meghan coming and spending time with us today. And again, this is a new partnership, and I'm glad to see that.
I know timing wise with these presentations, it was bumping up pretty close to that original timeline. So it's good to see that that's moved back a little bit. Meg has just put her Toyota.com email address in there,
and Jake has is there as well. So please feel free to reach out. And again, I said this in the beginning of the session, and I know Amy mentioned it and her presentation. This presentation, we'll have a link for you sent.
As soon as this gets sent to closed captioning and we get that done, it takes a couple of weeks to go through that process, once it's done, Domonique will be sending you links so that you're able to watch this again. In the interim, I know Domonique will be reaching out to you, and I know that, again, we're just really excited that you came here this evening to spend time with us. I don't know if there's any last questions more. Feel free to throw it there in the chat.
If not, I hope you all have a great finish to your week, and we look forward to seeing you here at WCC. Thank you. It was really good watching all of the demonstrations and PowerPoint, and thanks again. Thanks, Mohamed.
2022-05-17 12:14
