Summer Jobs Help Teachers Upgrade Skills, Curriculum

This summer, seven high school and community college instructors completed an externship program of the Connecticut Community Colleges’ College of Technology’s Regional Center for Next Generation Manufacturing (RCNGM). The program, now in its sixth year, is funded by the National Science Foundation.

Participating teachers, whose subjects include engineering, computer programming, and manufacturing, spent four weeks of their summer break working for local manufacturers and getting up to speed on today’s industry practices, challenges, and technologies.

“Many of our externs are former industry professionals: engineers and computer programmers who entered teaching as a second career,” says Mary deManbey, program manager for CBIA’s Education Foundation, the RCNGM’s primary business partner. Externships, she says, bring teachers up-to-date on rapidly changing manufacturing technologies and processes, giving them firsthand knowledge they can integrate into their own curriculum and pass along to students. CBIA administers the teacher externship program for the RCNGM.

CBIA member companies hosting externs this summer were ABB Inc. in Windsor; Associated Spring in Bristol; Habco Inc. in Glastonbury; Ultra Electronics Measurement Systems Inc. in Wallingford; and Branson Ultrasonics and FuelCell Energy, both in Danbury.

To host a teacher extern, contact Mary deManbey at (860) 244-1975.