WACTC gets state approval of diploma programs
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Action wasn’t swift, but SWIFT was approved for Western Area Career & Technology Center.
Pennsylvania’s Department of Education approved Western Area’s application to offer post-secondary diploma programs in welding technology, machine tool technology and mechatronics automation technology.
These programs will begin Jan. 5, said Terrence Smith, SWIFT’s director at the technical school.
The postsecondary programs would comprise the school’s Southwestern Institute for Technology, or SWIFT. These degrees would be especially appropriate for students in this region seeking positions in the heart of Marcellus Shale.
Western Area is now the only career and technology high school in Western Pennsylvania to offer these diplomas. Only two other high schools statewide have these programs: Lancaster Career and Technology Center and Central Pennsylvania Institute of Science & Technology.
“We’re excited to get the news,” Smith said. “More schools are teaching environmental and oil and gas.”
He said Dennis McCarthy’s predecessor as WACTC director, Joe Iannetti, pushed for this, as well.
“Dr. Iannetti had always wanted a community college in this area because of the industry around here. Now SWIFT has an opportunity to extend this to an associate degree (at another school).”
That degree, Smith added, will be virtually a 60-credit program.
He added California University of Pennsylvania “is very interested” in linking up with Western Area on a bachelor’s program.
A $165,000 grant from the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation earlier this year provided the financial seed for these WACTC programs.
Benedum gave the school a $280,000 grant a year before that for initital SWIFT planning.
The Pittsburgh-based foundation authorized more than $400 million in grants aimed at human development in Southwestern Pennsylvania and all of West Virginia.
McCarthy likewise was pleased by the approval, but it did come later than he initially anticipated. And word came down well after that.
He told the Observer-Reporter July 7 he was hoping to get a thumb’s up by week’s end. But he was not told anything for more than two months, until he received a letter of approval – dated last Wednesday – from the Division of Higher and Career Education.
And the first sentence of that letter states the state board of Private Licensed Schools actually approved the application more than a month earlier, Aug. 14.