Needs Are in the Driver Seat When Broadening Education, Access, and Momentum in Building Automation

Abstract

Valencia College in Orlando, Florida, is addressing the needs of the State of Florida's educational programs, the underrepresented student population, the local area building automation systems (BAS) controls industry, and the Central Florida community through the development of an Associate in Science (AS) degree in Energy Management and Controls Technology (EMCT) thanks to our National Science Foundation (NSF) Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Grant Proposal 1601403. The State of Florida's very first EMCT AS degree was offered by Valencia College beginning in August 2018. This was how Valencia College addressed the needs of the State of Florida's educational programs. In 2015, Valencia College began attending workshops conducted by the NSF ATE Building Efficiency for a Sustainable Tomorrow (BEST) Center that assists colleges around the United States with the creation of BAS controls technology programs similar to Valencia's EMCT AS degree. The main reason that the NSF ATE BEST Center was established is due to a strong need across the United States for trained BAS controls technicians, but there are actually very few training programs established within the United States and none within the State of Florida when Valencia College first began to create the curriculum frameworks for an EMCT AS degree beginning back in 2015. After submitting our curriculum framework to the state, the Florida Department of Education, Division of Career and Adult Education, authorized Valencia College to offer an EMCT AS degree which was the first of its kind within the State of Florida. From our approved emct curriculum framework, we then created our entire AS degree program curriculum. We worked closely with various Florida Department of Education discipline coordinators to create a new course prefix and numbering system for our EMCT AS degree program, which Valencia College's Curriculum Committee then approved.