Diesel Technology Pathway to Postsecondary Certification or Associate Degree

This project aims to serve the national interest by creating new integrated and streamlined pathways from secondary career and technical education (CTE) diesel programs to postsecondary certificate or associate degree programs in diesel technology. The goal is to address the growing unmet need for high school diesel students to continue their education beyond the high school CTE level.

The skills gap in the U.S. has caused the diesel equipment industry to hire CTE diesel students directly into the workforce, but there is a great need for employees with postsecondary training. Meeting this demand will help U.S. commercial trucking and industrial equipment companies to remain competitive globally. In addition, improving the pathway from CTE to postsecondary training also increases the possibility of career advancement and higher lifetime earnings for students from underserved backgrounds and those underrepresented in STEM, as postsecondary training and education helps workers remain current and adapt to ever-changing technologies.

The project will revise the current postsecondary curriculum to remove any redundancy with the CTE programs and will recognize prior CTE learning, thus reducing the number of credits and the tuition needs each semester. Additional activities are a virtual career awareness course for CTE students, professional development for CTE diesel instructors, and a diesel skills competition to attract students to the field.

Such activities will strengthen secondary CTE diesel programs that feed into postsecondary diesel offerings and will compose a replicable model that can be adopted in other technician education fields or at other institutions.

This project will implement and evaluate a new pathway between CTE and postsecondary education that uses articulation credits to reduce the need for students to take redundant content, thereby minimizing their time and financial commitment once they enter a postsecondary program. Students at Pennsylvania College of Technology (Penn College) will earn a postsecondary two-semester certificate or four-semester associate degree in an electric power generation or heavy construction equipment diesel technology program.

Project goals will be accomplished through the following activities: (1) collaborating with CTE instructors toward enhancing CTE programs and improving instructor training; (2) revising Penn College diesel courses to enable articulation credit to be awarded for content learned in CTE programs; and (3) increasing awareness in high school students and their families, CTE instructors, and high school guidance counselors about diesel technology careers and the long-term benefits of the new CTE-postsecondary pathway. The project will implement and evaluate a skills competition and a new virtual workshop for CTE students that will increase awareness of careers in heavy equipment and power generation and further the use of a virtual platform for productive learning.

The project team will investigate the benefits of the revised pathway for students, especially if it leads to increased program completion, and will contribute to existing literature that seeks to improve pathways to technical education. This project is funded by the Advanced Technological Education program that focuses on the education of technicians for the advanced-technology fields that drive the Nation’s economy.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.