Published: November 02, 2009 10:27 pm      

Officials set meeting on magnet school talks

Studies to help with new ACTC campus

Ashland — Local college officials will spend two days in Maryland this week studying magnet schools of the type planned for the Summit campus of Ashland Community and Technical College.

They will be attending a conference at Hagerstown Community College, which has a STEM — standing for science, technology, engineering and mathematics — school site, said ACTC President Greg Adkins.

Also there will be representatives of other institutions in a mentoring program in which colleges like ACTC can study successful initiatives and develop their own.

The program consists of six mentoring groups, each with one mentor college and two mentee colleges. ACTC’s mentor is El Paso Community College, which ACTC officials have visited because of its successful magnet STEM school.

“It’s always exciting to see strategies that other colleges are using,” Adkins said.

A curriculum has been developed for the Ashland magnet school, said math and natural sciences division chairman Keith Brammell.

The school is planned for a fall 2011 opening and will draw students from all 10 school districts in Boyd, Greenup, Carter, Elliott and Lawrence counties.

It will supply courses that will meet high school graduation requirements and supply college credit so students at the magnet school will earn an associate’s degree when they graduate.

The college credit will come through specific courses in science, math, humanities and social interaction, Brammell said.

There will be two tracks, one for a biomedical emphasis and the other for engineering.

The curriculum will be flexible enough to allow for expansion depending on what students need, he said.

All the area school districts worked with ACTC to develop the curriculum, said dean of academic affairs Janie Kitchen.

The Ashland magnet school will be located where ACTC currently houses its technical programs. Most of those programs are slated to be transferred to the EastPark campus upon completion of a new building there.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com.





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