The Messenger 11.21.07

Dyersburg State Community College has received a $110,000 grant to improve the college’s Perkins IV Career Technical Education programming at area high schools, DSCC president Karen Bowyer recently announced.
The Tennessee Board of Regents and the Tennessee Board of Education awarded the grant as part of the U.S. Department of Education Carl D. Perkins Career Education Improvement Act reforms.
Perkins IV Career Technical Education program, formerly called Tech Prep, is a federally-funded program that matches up courses at the high school level to courses taught at the post-secondary level. It provides the opportunity for students in technical education courses to earn college credit for college level coursework completed while still enrolled in high school and allows the student to avoid repeating the course at additional expense in college.
The program leads students to an associate or a baccalaureate degree or to a post-secondary certificate in a specific career field. Career clusters have included everything from architecture and construction to business and marketing to law and information technology.
The recent changes in the law mean the program will shift the emphasis from “vocational” to “career” and will focus on both academic and technical standards. “We are putting the emphasis on rigor and accountability of instruction,” said Ron Coffman, DSCC Perkins IV Career Technical Education coordinator and author of the grant.
Coffman, who has a master’s of business administration degree from Regis University, has worked at DSCC since September 2006. He previously was a financial aid specialist at Rogue Community College in Oregon.
Public high schools involved in the grant are Bradford, Brighton, Dyersburg, Dyer County, Gibson County, Halls, Lake County, Munford, Obion County Central, Ripley, South Fulton, Trenton Peabody and Union City. Two private Christian schools in the area are also eligible to participate.
n addition, DSCC administers one program, the Cisco Certified Network Administrator (CCNA) curriculum, at Crockett County, Haywood and Humboldt high schools.
For more information, call Coffman at (731) 286-3218 or e-mail coffman@dscc.edu.