League Services Announces New Topics

League Services features the following workshops and presentations for your college in-service and professional development programs. For information about other topics available from League Services, contact Ed Leach, leach@league.org, or (480) 705-8200, ext. 233.

Partnering for Progress: Aligning Technical Education With Technical Certification Sponsors. How do you differentiate your college from others? What distinguishes you as the best choice for IT education and training? One way is to integrate IT certifications into your courses and programs. What would be a new way for you to market your college, your IT courses, and your IT programs to a new audience? IT certifications. You don’t have the dollars to do direct marketing? Try IT certifications. During this presentation, participants learn how two-year colleges have benefited from a partnership with IT certification sponsors, how they have tapped into a new enrollment source, and how they have expanded their marketing capabilities. As with any venture, resources are needed to make this successful and sustainable. The information learned in this presentation comes from real-world experiences creating a connection with the world of IT certifications.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify sponsors of IT certifications.
• Distinguish between the start-up and ongoing costs for specific certifications.
• Determine the easiest and the most difficult certification sponsors.
• List the learning options for offering IT certifications.
• Evaluate the nonfinancial costs and benefits for offering IT certifications.
• Define reasons for partnering with IT certification sponsors.
• Determine the support necessary for keeping such a partnership healthy.
• Identify ways to blend IT certifications into degrees and diplomas.
• Discover the sources available to seek out certification sponsors.

Partnering for Progress: Aligning Technical Education With Business and Industry. Two-year colleges have a long tradition of working with business and industry. Challenges associated with information technology training, however, present new opportunities for partnerships. Industry is dealing with the reality that the shelf life for most IT knowledge is about 18 months. Our challenge is to provide solutions for coping with this volatile reality. Colleges and businesses benefit from this relationship: business and industry by clarifying essential skills to accomplish business goals and colleges by providing the means to deliver those skills. The common link in this partnership is the set of IT competencies needed by IT workers. Colleges can facilitate the identification of such skills and clarify the scope of such training. The desired outcome of this partnership is to provide IT workers with a relevant, valuable experience while supporting the goals of their business.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify sponsors of IT industry training.
• Distinguish between the startup and ongoing costs for industry training.
• Determine the easiest and the most difficult tasks for IT industry training.
• List the learning options for offering IT industry needs.
• Evaluate the nonfinancial costs and benefits for offering IT industry training.
• Define the reasons to partner with businesses for customized IT training.
• Determine the support necessary for keeping such a partnership healthy.
• Identify ways to involve business and industry professionals in advisory committees.
• Discover the sources available to seek out industry training opportunities.

Ethics and IT Professionals. Participants discuss data security, federal privacy and security compliance regulations, corporate culture, and the attitudes that the workers of tomorrow, your students, have on ethics. These are common concerns for all businesses and colleges, and IT professionals are at the center of it all. They oversee information and the access to information that is the lifeblood of an institution’s health and survival. When the flow of information is slowed or the integrity of the information is contaminated, serious damage occurs. And with the advent of regulations like HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, and others, there is even more cause for concern for IT professionals. Learn about ethical modeling as a leader in the classroom, colleges, and businesses. Find out about the most common reasons for not reporting ethical misconduct and learn strategies for making ethical decisions.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the importance of ethics in today’s business and academic climate.
• Distinguish between the ethical challenges associated with nonacademic and academic institutions and professionals.
• Determine the scope of the ethical problem in the United States.
• List the fallouts for IT professionals from ethical problems.
• Evaluate how IT professionals compare to other professionals in ethical surveys.
• Define the most current challenges to IT professional ethical behavior.
• Identify the hopeful signs for ethical behavior being a priority in the American work place.
• Determine the components for IT professionals to function ethically.

Academic Careers at Two-Year Colleges. Teaching at a community college isn’t usually what future members of the professoriate have in mind when they enter graduate school. More likely, they’re entertaining notions of molding the best and brightest young minds at some prestigious liberal arts institution or working on a critical research project at Major State U.

Yet, that intention is probably short sighted. Almost half the faculty members working in American higher education today teach at community and technical colleges, which makes sense since these colleges enroll just under half of all American undergraduates and well over half of freshmen and sophomores. Thus, not only is there an ongoing need for quality faculty members who are willing to spend their careers at community colleges, but any serious jobseeker in higher education would be ill advised to narrow his or her choices by 50 percent.

This presentation covers everything from the application process through tenure review, explains community colleges to those individuals unfamiliar with them, sells them on the idea of teaching at a community college, helps them navigate the job search process, and guides them through the first few years of their professional lives. This presentation is ideal for graduate students preparing to enter the academic job market for the first time, and also for new community and technical college faculty members.

The presenter is a 20-year veteran of community colleges who has served as a part-time faculty member, a full-time faculty member, a department head, and an academic dean. He is also a regular columnist for The Chronicle of Higher Education’s popular “Two-Year Track” segment, a frequent speaker at colleges and universities across the nation, and one of the leading authorities on two-year college academic careers.

To find out more, email Ed Leach or call (480) 705-8200, ext. 233.