NEW AND RELATED SERVICES DIVISION VICE PRESIDENT CANDIDATE QUESTIONS
CANDIDATE: Chet Wichowski
The office of Vice-President does require many hours of meetings, travel, and communications with your Division/Region Committees, members, and ACTE Staff. How will you manage your schedule to allow for the time demands of the office?
My position as the Associate Director of the Center for Career & Technical Education at Temp[le University provides scheduling flexibility in order to meet professional responsibilities at the local,state and national level. More importantly, Dr. Clark, the Director of the Temple University Center, has indicated he will provide release time for me to attend ACTE Board meetings and related activities. Further, the use of the Internet allows me the opportunity to fulfill most of my responsibilities while away from my Temple University office.
Every Vice-President brings unique skills and talents to the position. What do you see as yours, and how will these attributes help you accomplish the goals of your Division/Region and the Preferred Future of ACTE?
My professional background is uniquely aligned to many of the Sections of the ACTE Division of New & Related Services. For example, I have worked as a CTE teacher educator, served as the director of a CTE curriculum laboratory and directed several large scale curriculum projects, served as a cooperative education coordinator and directed a university cooperative education certification program, conducted several research and development projects on the integration of reading programs in CTE, and worked in international settings with the U.S. Department of Labor.
Due to my varied background, I feel that I can identify with the members of many of the sections in the NRS Division. Further, as a former Vice President of the New & Related Services Division, I have had the opportunity to provide leadership to all of the NRS Sections and assist in the establishment of 3 new NRS Sections during my term of office. These included Information Technology,ROTC, and Safe Schools.
I firmly believe that the NRS Division serves the broad mission of CTE and ACTE by providing support to all areas of CTE and by providing the opportunity to allow for the establishment of new and emerging areas to become new Sections in the NRS Division.
My intention, if elected to this position, will be to provide representation of the needs of all of the NRS Division Sections to the ACTE Board of Directors and to provide support for the establishment of new Sections in the NRS Division.
How can ACTE, the largest association representing CTE, provide leadership to all disciplines in the integration of technical and academic content? And what do you see as the future model of Career and Technical Education?
The integration of academics and technical content can best be served by providing successful models based on research. Consider the following. Through my experience as the director of a R&D project that integrated reading strategies into the delivery of instruction in the CTE classroom, I was able to see the results of this model through documented increases in student reading levels throughout Pennsylvania.
Another successful model that was built as a R&D project is the Math in CTE Project developed by the NCRCTE. Application of the methods developed in this model have also been used successfully around the country and have also demonstrated results that have shown increases in state student test scores.
The future model of CTE will likely be built on successful integration of academics and CTE practices, provide for the attainment of industry recognized certificates and be articulated with transfer credit to post-secondary certificate, diploma and degree programs. Further, the model of success of future CTE programs must also be closely aligned with meeting the needs of business and industry in local communities.
How will you, as a member of the ACTE Board, assist in increasing public/private partnerships, and in growing our relationships with business and industry partners?
As a member of the ACTE Board of Directors, I will support Board action to establish the development of active working relationships with key members of the business and industrial community at the national level as well as at the regional and state levels. Further, I would point out that the backbone of the economy in this country is built on small and medium size businesses. Due to that, it is important to work with economic development groups that represent the needs of small and medium size businesses as well as big business.
Although the obvious component that CTE can bring to the table is hard skill development, it must be recognized that soft skill development is a necessary complement needed for success in the workplace. Due to this, it is important to encourage Board support to aid in the development of successful relationships with business and industry. The combination of quality competency-based skill development resulting in industry recognized certificates in concert with the development of soft skills is a model that is beneficial to employees, employers and economic development.
In any association, the individual member is very important. How will you encourage membership in ACTE, and what efforts should be undertaken by the board to increase membership and member involvement?
Declining ACTE membership has been a trend for the last several years. As a discussant on the ACTE member value task force, it become clear to me that the review and expansion of membership benefits can have an impact. Further, it would be important to continue the discussion started by the member value task force and involve new players to explore other ways to increase the value of membership over the next few years rather than by having the task force only serve for a limited time period.
A large organization cannot provide member involvement in traditional means. Instead, it must explore the use of social media and differentiated networks at the regional and state levels to involve the ACTE membership as much as possible.The value of ACTE membership will not be fully developed without increased member involvement. As an organization, we must always ask the question - What can ACTE do to better support the needs of the individual member?
What programs or efforts would you support to increase perceived ACTE member value?
The last year has shown increased outreach efforts to connect with ACTE members. I would recommend the continuation of these efforts as structural elements of the organization. Further, I would recommend the continuation of the member value task force and the development and the use of a combination of surveys and focus group discussions to bring in new levels of awareness on member satisfaction as well as to identify new areas of member benefits or services that ACTE can provide. Another recommendation would be to conduct an ongoing comprehensive review of state best practices to identify member benefits and services that could be adopted on the national level.
Recognizing that diversity and involvement are important attributes of ACTE, how will you engage members to serve on committees, task forces, and to run for ACTE office?
I would encourage the use of digital and traditional human resources as much as possible to reach out and recruit members to serve on committees, task forces, and to run for ACTE offices. I would also support the use and expansion of existing networks to reach out and engage ACTE member involvement. In addition, I would also recommend the use of proven practices used in the past such as mentoring to encourage involvement and aid in the development of leadership skills for individuals at the local, state, regional and national levels.