DCCC revs up high-tech training with grant
Delaware County Community College with help of West Chester company uses virtual reality technology in latest offerings to students
state grant will help area workers and students keep up with the latest innovations in workplace technology.
Delaware County Community College, in partnership with the Delaware County Workforce Development Board, recently announced it has received a $198,067 Strategic Innovation Grant “to train workers for high-tech jobs of the 21st Century.”
The grant was awarded to the Delaware County Workforce Development Board, which acts as the fiscal agent and works in concert with the college.
The college said it will use the grant, which was awarded by the Commonwealth’s Department of Labor and Industry, to further infuse virtual reality and augmented reality into its educational curriculums for an ever-expanding list of fields such as health care, skilled trades, advanced manufacturing and advanced technology.
A West Chester company, Tipping Point LLC, is providing the training to the colleges’s faculty and staff.
“Tipping Point is going to train our faculty in computer science how to use the virtual reality and then it’s going to be just like ‘train the trainer.’ The faculty are going to come back and work with our students, and our computer science students are actually going to develop the virtual reality program that will be used for the advanced manufacturing students,” explained Anthony Twyman, assistant to the president for communications.
“The first use will be in process control technology, so students will actually be creating dangerous scenarios that they can visualize through virtual reality and then see how they would respond in a safe manner to a dangerous scenario that might take place at a workplace,” Twyman said. “So that’s how it’s going to be used for process control technology.”
Delaware County Community College has campuses in Delaware and Chester counties. The program using the new technology will be offered at its Marple campus, Twyman said.
“We offer both a process control certificate program, which is less than one year, and then we also have a degree which is the advanced technology degree and it’s an associate’s in applied science ... and that is a two-year degree,” he said. “You can take the process control certificate program and get the certificate and that can be become a stepping stone to get the associate’s in applied science.”
Augmented reality and virtual reality use the latest in technology to create artificial environments that simulate real work environments. The college already uses virtual reality to train students in welding.
“This just further enhances it, but what we really like about it is that it makes our students more competitive in the job market when you’re able to use technology,” Twyman said.
Also, in 2015 the college was the first community college in the nation to acquire a LapSim, a virtual laparoscopic training simulator that helps students studying in perioperative nursing, registered nurse first assistant, surgical technology and other medical programs.
“With the help of the Delaware County Workforce Development Board, Delaware County Community College will utilize this grant to further improve its cutting-edge, technologically advanced training for the high-tech jobs of today and tomorrow,” said Jerry Parker, president of Delaware County Community College.
Tipping Point Media has been in business for 14 years developing training programs.
“We believe these this technologies type are of going to revolutionize training and education,” said Amy Garner, Tipping Point’s director of client services. “We just recently developed a 360-degree educational tool to onboard new hires in a large medical device manufacturing facility. This gives the user hands-on experience prior to on-site training.”
Delaware County Community College has a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Complex, consisting of the STEM Center and a free-standing 32,000-square-foot Advanced Technology Center.
The Delaware County Workforce Development Board was one of 10 workforce development boards in Pennsylvania that received a total of $2 million in Strategic Innovation grants. The grants, which come from state Reemployment Fund resources, are designed to encourage creativity and innovation.