Mary Brumbach
The GO Project, an outreach program of the Ellison Miles Geotechnology Institute, will go to Odessa in Ector County next week. Ten classes of 5th-graders will learn about erosion and weathering from a trained professional geoscientist, April 21-22. This topic is often poorly understood by both adults and students, but the hands-on activities and many images from familiar areas in Texas that make up this program help bring the concepts to life.
The Miles Institute’s GO Project reached more than 4,200 students in third through ninth grades in the 2006-2007 academic year! The cost, $40 per program, allows a teacher to choose several topics for classroom enrichment and there are lots of touchable items and great pictures to accompany every talk. Miles Institute stakeholders support this program through donations.
Staff members of the Professional Development Office are hosts of the Texas Learning Styles Academy, April 17-19, a Perkins-funded statewide project designed to enhance the teaching skills of career and technical faculty by applying best practices from current educational research. The “Teaching with Style” class will include brain-based and accelerated learning.
The Texas Workforce Commission, through its Skill Development Fund, awarded Brookhaven College a grant to train current employees and new hires at Authentix, Inc., a Town of Addison-based company. The company uses nanotechnology, a field of applied science whose unifying theme is the control of matter on the atomic and molecular scale, to conduct product-tracking, counterfeit detection and brand security. Nanotechnology is science and technology based on the nanometer, one billionth of a meter, formerly the millimicron. Authentix uses high technology at this small scale to detect counterfeited reproductions in petroleum, pharmaceutical and consumer products. Authentix works with several governments in producing methods to detect counterfeit currency and tracking of products through the production line to maintain their high quality and integrity. Authentix has developed technology to detect counterfeit reproduction of consumer goods such as liquor and medicine. The grant was for $80,389 and will provide specialized training to 48 trainees at Authentix. The training will be conducted at the plant site in Addison over the next 12 months.
The 2008 Annual Report for the Lumina Foundation-funded Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count program is in preparation by the college’s AtD executive team. Elements to be included are the learning community pilots, results of the review of student services by NACADA, and professional travel and professional development funded by the grant. Plans for the fourth and final year of the program are being developed as well.
