North Iowa Area Community College and the University of Northern Iowa are partnering to help provide more technology education teachers for Iowa's schools.
UNI President Robert Koob, NIACC President David Buettner, and Iowa Department of Education Director Ted Stilwill made the announcement in April during the 6th Annual State Tech Prep Conference in Des Moines sponsored by NIACC and the Dept. of Education.
The NIACC-UNI Integrated Technology Education program allows students to complete their first two years of study at NIACC and transfer easily into the technology education curriculum at UNI.
Iowa joins the rest of the nation in facing a major shortage in industrial technology teachers going into the new millennium. According to a Dept. of Education survey, over 100 secondary technology education positions were open last year in Iowa, yet the state produced just seven new teachers qualified for those positions.
A task force found that Iowa will be struggling to fill more than 200 vacancies by 2001. UNI and William Penn College are the only two institutions offering technology education programs in Iowa.
"It is clear that the future of technical education is called into question if strategies aren't developed and implemented to identify, educate, and place qualified teachers in K-12 technology programs," said Dr. Michael Morrison (retired 2008), NIACC Vice President for Academic Affairs.
"Technology education" is the contemporary name for what was previously known as industrial technology or industrial arts, according to Charles Johnson, UNI professor of Industrial Technology who worked with others from both campuses to develop the agreement.
"Technological literacy is crucial in the world in which we now live, in terms of both understanding society and making career decisions," Johnson said.
The agreement allows students to complete their initial course work at NIACC either with the College's Associate of Arts (AA) degree or Associate of Applied Science (AAS) degree and to complete their Bachelor of Arts-teaching degree in Technology Education at UNI.
"The UNI-NIACC partnership demonstrates a sincere effort to make the educational system seamless. The partnership program recognizes the value of the AAS degree, which considerably enhances student choice and flexibility," said Morrison.
Both schools expect the integrated program to also attract some current teachers who wish to move over into technology education and some people already employed in technical fields who want to get involved with teaching.
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