Get a Jump Start on College or Career
Oakland County Tech Prep Programs

by Carol Jonson

Q: What’s a great way to save as much as $3000 on your college or technical career education while
you’re still a junior or senior in high school?
A: Enroll in a Technical Preparation (Tech Prep) program at your secondary school and earn from three to 15 college credits…at no cost to you.

It’s something about 200 savvy Oakland County high school students do every year, according to Barbara Dursum, Director of the Oakland County Tech Prep Consortium, a partnership between Oakland Schools, Oakland Community College, and many representatives from business, industry and labor who help set standards for the programs. What’s Tech Prep All About? Educators in Michigan have developed Tech Prep programs in six career-focused pathways to help students transition seamlessly from high school into college or a career. “Those pathways are Arts and Communications; Business Management, Marketing and Technology; Engineering/Manufacturing and Industrial Technology; Health Science; Human Services and Natural Resources and Agriscience,” says Dursum. (Please see box accompanying this story for a more complete listing of courses.)

Bruce Sutton, Tech Prep Secondary Liaison and CAD/Drafting teacher at North Farmington Hills High School goes over some fine points of CAD design with student Zachary Goodwin of Farmington Hills.

Fifty Oakland County high schools and alternative education programs – including Oakland Schools’ four career technical campuses – participate in the Tech Prep program, although not all of the high schools offer classes in every pathway. A Tech Prep Snapshot At North Farmington Hills High School (NFHHS), for example, students can participate in the Health Science or CAD/Drafting Tech Prep programs and earn college credits while still in high school. Bruce Sutton is the secondary school liaison for Oakland County’s Tech Prep CAD/Drafting pathway, and he teaches CAD/Drafting at NFHHS. His advocacy for the Tech Prep program reaches back to his own high school and college years. “I went to a junior college to begin with, and seemed to have lots of classes that repeated things I’d already studied in high school,” he says. A teacher for a dozen years in the Saginaw area before he moved to Detroit in 1989, Sutton became involved in the movement to give secondary school students college credit for what they learned in high school. Sutton believes high school is “exploratory – a time for students to find out what they like in terms of their future careers. Tech Prep courses are a good way to begin that exploration…and earn college credits that transfer to OCC to be used toward a one-year certificate or a two-year associate degree. That OCC associate degree, in turn, may be applied toward a four-year tachelor’s degree at many colleges and universities with which OCC has articulation agreements. Although there’s no “typical” student in Sutton’s classes, he says many are interested in engineering – some because their parents or older siblings are working in the field, and others because they’d like to design cars or like to draw. Sutton’s Tech Prep CAD/Drafting classes give students a chance to learn about the field from the ground up. “First of all, students in my classes learn drafting on the board. Theory is great, but you also have to learn with your hands,” he says. “Students need to understand drafting before they go on to using the computer as a tool to assist in design and engineering.” In addition to working on individual and class projects, Sutton’s students also compete – very successfully - in industry-sponsored design contests, as the CAD lab walls adorned with dozens of award certificates attest. Bruce Sutton, Tech Prep Secondary Liaison and CAD/Drafting teacher at North Farmington Hills High School goes over some fine points of CAD design with student Zachary Goodwin of Farmington Hills. TOP

How Do You Sign Up For Tech Prep?
Fliers posted in schools and sent home with students explain the mechanics of the Tech Prep program,
says Dursum. Also, each career pathway has an OCC and a secondary school liaison, and each high school has a Tech Prep contact or counselor who can provide information on the program.
Students and their parents complete Tech Prep paperwork, working closely with teachers and the
school principal. The Tech Prep Advanced Placement Credit Agreement form clearly states which high school courses correspond with which OCC courses, and sets out conditions and requirements that students must meet to earn advanced placement credits that will transfer to OCC. “There is no charge to the student for taking Tech Prep classes, and they must apply to OCC for advanced placement credit within two years of high school graduation,” Dursum explains. Those credits then count toward the student’s certificate or degree from Oakland Community College. “Tech Prep is a win-win situation,” Dursum says. “It’s a way to get a head start on college, focus on a career that interests you and save money you’d otherwise spend on college tuition, fees and textbooks.”

For more information on Tech Prep, call
248-232-4571 or log onto OCC’s website:
oaklandcc.edu/techprep.

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