Effective Practices for Starting a Chemical Technology Program
Starting a new chemical technology program is a challenging undertaking to meet the unique needs of students and hiring corporations. Curriculum must be responsive to the rapidly changes, academically rigorous, and addressing the needs of students and the community. To assist in the development of new programs, the ACS Chemical Technology Approval Service developed a list of effective practices for starting chemistry-based technology programs. The list was compiled using feedback from the ACS-approved programs and the experiences of committee members.
If you would like to start a chemical technology program at your institution, refer to the following recommendations:
Perform a needs analysis
To ensure that your community needs a chemical technology program at your location, form a committee that includes members from local industry, incumbent chemical technicians, workforce development organizations, community members, potential faculty and students, K-16 faculty, and staff.
Some things to consider in the needs analysis:
- What types of technicians are needed in your area?
- Where will potential students come from?
- What industries will provide experiential and employment opportunities?
- What academic institutions will consider transfer of credit?
Identify partners for your program
Start with the committee you assembled for your needs analysis. Attend regional alliance or professional society meetings (such as ACS meetings) to identify industry partners. Your local chamber of commerce and workforce development agencies should also be familiar with local industry. Be clear that you are seeking partners, not sponsors or donors. Be sure to also include secondary, two-year, and four-year institutions in your alliance, as well as community workforce organizations.
Partner with established chemical technology programs in your region
Use the to identify programs in your area. Partnering with another program will give you and technician students access to more resources.
Find a mentor
Someone who has started a program before can be an invaluable source of advice and ideas. Try contacting established chemical technology programs in your region, coordinators of ACS-approved chemical technology programs, or the Committee on Technician Affairs.
Work with your partners to develop mission and goals
The more specific the goals, the more focused your program will be. Identifying clear goals at the outset will reduce confusion among your partners and make the development of program assessment tools easier.
Develop a curriculum
Developing a curriculum up front will provide a framework for future discussions with industry partners. Chemical technology programs must be responsive to local needs. Therefore, there is no single curriculum that will cover all contingencies. Review Effective Practices of Chemical Technology Programs to get started.
Work with industry partners to identify specific skills and knowledge graduates need
Several tools are available for developing a set of skill standards specific to you and your partners’ needs. The ChemTechStandards database has tools to customize existing skill standards sets. A DACUM (Develop a Curriculum) or similar analysis program can be used to develop a new set.
Align program needs with existing resources
Determine whether the identified skills and knowledge can be adequately provided by existing courses, or if new courses are needed. Although some programs have developed a unique set of courses specifically for their chemical technology students, most programs find standard chemistry courses sufficient for about 70% of the curriculum.
Specialty courses focusing on laboratory work, capstone courses or projects, and internships, frequently comprise the remainder of the curriculum.
NOTE: Remember to consider your students. If you have a large portion of non-traditional students in your program, offering night, weekend, and summer courses may encourage them to enter and complete your program.
Quantitatively analyze the curriculum
Once you have developed a curriculum, you should document how well it matches the needs of local industry using a gap analysis or crosswalk.
- Gap Analysis
In a gap analysis, the material taught in the curriculum is compared to the needs of industry, and gaps between the two are identified and resolved. Often a set of skill standards is used. For example, the ACS ChemTechStandards database provides three sets of skill standards for chemical technicians and a gap analysis tool for curriculum alignment. Skill standards are also available from Bio-Link, the Center for the Advancement of Process Technology, and the National Network for Pulp and Paper Technology Training. - Crosswalk
In a crosswalk, the curriculum is compared side-by-side with a set of standards, and found to be either complete or missing pieces. Anything missing from the curriculum is identified and added.
Develop assessment tools
You will need two kinds of assessment tools:
- Program outcome assessment
Just because something is taught in class does not mean it is learned by the student. Outcome assessments provide a check that the program is effective in teaching students what they need to know. - Industry alignment assessment
The needs of industry change quickly. The alignment of the program with the needs of industry should be checked frequently and the program adjusted as need.
Keep your partners involved
It is common for partners to be heavily involved in the planning and development of a program but lose interest once the program is functional. Keeping partners involved requires regular communication and meaningful projects. Here are some suggestions:
- Assign primary responsibility of some aspect of the program to one of your partners.
- Have frequent meetings with your partners.
- Make the partners part of the curriculum. Have them serve as guest lecturers, give group tours, or rate student presentations.
- Have your partners divide into subcommittees to address specific problems or work on items of continuous improvement. The 2004 ACS report, Critical Issues and Effective Practices in Chemistry-Based Laboratory Programs, identifies nine areas that would make good topics for such projects.
Join/develop a regional alliance or partnership
Going outside your local area gives you a greater pool of resources to draw upon.