Taylor and the surrounding region have a high-tech future on the horizon, and area institutions of higher learning are adapting right along there with it to meet the needs of local industry, community partners and students seeking up-to-date, hands-on skills. This was the focus of several presentations made at the Taylor Texas Chamber of Commerce and Visitor’s Center’s luncheon Aug. 22 at Taylor Independent School Events Center.
“We are here to place more Texans in great paying jobs,” said Lissa Adams, who has served as the provost at Texas State Technical College for the past three years. “We work with industry to help develop our curriculum. We are accountable to industry, so everything we do is constantly evolving, which we did a lot of during the pandemic. So our goal is to make sure that we are providing opportunities for anybody that wants them in technical education.”
Adams said her school offers a variety of programs for students of all backgrounds, often with flexible choices for people’s schedules. “We are here to make sure that we are filling that skills gap,” Adams said. “We are trying to create a better pipeline, a bigger pipeline with multiple entries and exits for those nontraditional students.”
Adams said the college offers three business lines: dual credit, credit side, which is taught on campus, and workforce training, which is non-credit.
“We have been working for years on blurring those lines, so that students that are coming form the high schools can come straight to TSTC, and we can give them credit while they are here, and then matriculate to an institution,” Adams said. “But it’s also for those family people who are looking to reskill and upskill.
During the pandemic we saw a lot of these.”
DeDe Griffith, Temple College’s vice president of Workforce Development since July 2021, was also on hand to discuss how her school was adapting to today’s needs.
“There’s a changing landscape in Taylor; did y’all know that?” Griffith joked.
“At Temple College, we really have taken it back to the ground to say, ‘How do we build what the Taylor community needs? Let’s look at what we have done in that past, and what worked. We really tailor specific programming at all levels … because the way we tackle this changing landscape, it can’t be a oneoff. It really has to be a systemic change, and we really want to be a part of that.”
At the meeting, Temple College student Adrianna Rogers, who studies engineering and design technology and serves as the president of the college’s award-winning SkillsUSA STEM Club, talked about her experience in school.
“I just started the whole degree plan in January,” Rogers said. “It was like a whirlwind. I didn’t expect to be thrown into it, but I am glad I did. It didn’t feel like school. I was learning a whole new craft.”
Currently, Adams is involved in sketching the entire Temple College campus to make into a 3-D virtual reality tour using virtual reality headsets.
“It’s fun,” she said. “You don’t feel like you’re learning.
You are doing hard work but its like you want to do it. I draw all day.”
