Learning Resources

Abstract: Technical and community college education must adapt to the changing workforce to ensure success for the students, communities, and states they serve, and their physical campuses need to support this adaptation. We will explore the planning, design, and stakeholder collaboration behind Lanier Technical College's new, six-building, 95-acre campus designed to house 50 unique workforce development programs. We will also share consensus building and expectation management techniques we employed to build buy-in with diverse stakeholders.

Abstract: This session will illustrate how industry-academic partnerships have led to the creation of cutting-edge, career-focused education that reimagines vocational training through a new, didactic construction sciences facility. With a skilled labor shortage in the construction industry, this program hopes to close that gap while creating an attractive, career-focused educational alternative to the traditional four-year college education. Beginning in middle and high schools and continuing through the workplace, developing new partnerships along the education continuum helps to reimagine workforce education and facilities to inspire the next generation of construction industry leaders.

Abstract: Middle skills education, personalized curriculum, and student-directed training are playing an increasingly integral role in higher education. A new generation of students is already likely to hold different educational expectations and desires than their predecessors. Accommodating those trends means planners, architects, and higher education administrators will need to think differently about how they train skilled workers for the most needed professions.