Good Partners

Build it and they will come. That is the story of the recently opened Western Maricopa Education Center (West-MEC) Northeast Campus. The Northeast Campus is built on an 11-acre site adjacent to the Deer Valley Airport in Phoenix. The design-build project by DLR Group/Architechnology and McCarthy Building Companies included the transformation of existing office, warehouse, hangar and vehicle maintenance shop spaces into a first-class educational environment. Touring the campus and meeting with staff members and their superintendent, Greg Donovan, gave me a renewed appreciation for the value of partnerships — and the value that a career and technical education can provide.

More than 21,000 students from 46 high schools across almost 3,685 square miles are currently enrolled in West-MEC Career and Technical Education (CTE) courses. In addition to satellite programs for students at their high school campus, West-MEC currently operates a Central Campus, a Freightliner Campus, Start@West-MEC and the Northeast Campus, and has educational partner campuses at Cortez High School, Glendale Community College and Glendale Community College North, Southwest Skill Center/Estrella Mountain Community College and Maricopa Skill Center/Cutting Edge Style Academy and Northwest Campus.

Other partnerships and alliances include Arizona DES Rehabilitation services, Southwest Skills Center, Sonoran UCEDD and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Association. In addition to equipment and support, Snap-On Corporation has named West-MEC as a certification center for the state and the train-the-trainer conduit for a four-state area. Trane Corporation teamed to establish an HVACR training program and the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station has partnered to establish an Energy Technician training center.

This is a school that offers students a college and career pathway. The proof is in the numbers. The retention rate at the school is between 96-100 percent. The graduation rate for CTE students is 99 percent, compared to a 76 percent graduation rate for all other students in Arizona. On the state standardized math test, 92 percent of CTE students passed as compared to a passing rate of 70 percent for all other students.

In a time when we must focus our energies on partnerships, workforce development, a bridge between high school and college, jobs and student success — West-MEC has done it right. It is a program and campus worth seeing!

This article originally appeared in the issue of .

Featured

  • Springfield Breaks Ground on $53.7M Pipkin Middle School Rebuild

    Construction is underway on a new, state-of-the-art Pipkin Middle School in Springfield, Mo., a major step in Springfield Public Schools’ (SPS) long-term facility improvement plan, according to local news. The $53.7-million project officially broke ground in early June, following years of planning and community input aimed at modernizing aging infrastructure and addressing student capacity concerns.

  • ProTeam Launches GoFit 6 HEPA Backpack Vacuum

    Technology leader Emerson recently introduced the new ProTeam GoFit 6 HEPA backpack vacuum, according to a news release. The vacuum was designed to capture 99.97% of particulates down to 0.3 microns—including atmospheric hazards like lead dust, mold spores, and other particulates—through an advanced filtration system.

  • California High School Starts Construction on New CTE Building

    Analy High School, part of the West Sonoma County Union High School District (WSCUHSD) in Sebastopol, Calif., recently broke ground on a new Career Technical Education (CTE) Building, according to a news release. The 15,000-square-foot facility will offer specialized facilities for students in engineering, welding, culinary arts, agricultural sciences, and design thinking.

  • modern college building with circuit and brain motifs

    Anthropic Introduces Claude for Education

    Anthropic has launched a version of its Claude AI assistant tailored for higher education institutions. Claude for Education "gives academic institutions secure, reliable AI access for their entire community," the company said, to enable colleges and universities to develop and implement AI-enabled approaches across teaching, learning, and administration.

Digital Edition