HEAT was the brainchild of Don Goodwin and Mary Ann Roe, researchers who have long shared a vision for improving technical education in this country. In 1993 the two set out to study training programs in Singapore, Japan, and Germany, all of which, they believed, did a superior job of aligning adult-education programs with the needs of business. "U.S. culture tends to divide people into 'blue collar' and 'white collar' professionals," says Roe, pointing out what she considers a philosophical misstep. As a result technical education traditionally targets blue-collar workers and takes place in community colleges. In the eyes of corporate America -- and America in general -- those workers are less valuable than their white-collar counterparts.
Roe insists that that distinction has become less meaningful in the current economy, in which everyone from chief information officer to auto mechanic requires a broader, deeper technical education than ever before and in which skills become obsolete almost as soon as they've been acquired. Consequently, today's workers must be trained and retrained throughout their professional lives. "This is the first time in history in which we need knowledge workers who understand both the reason for and the operation of applied technology," says Roe. "They do not, and cannot, wear either white or blue collars. They work with their heads and their hands. I like to call them 'gold collar' workers."
In countries that value such employees, Roe and Goodwin found, educational and professional institutions worked with businesses to supply the skilled workforces they needed. And the two educators wanted to try something similar in this country. The high-tech training center they envisioned would save taxpayers money, because publicly funded colleges would no longer have to build their own labs or be responsible for keeping equipment up-to-date. It would also improve technical education, because companies could tell college instructors and administrators exactly what skills they were looking for in workers. Most important, it would boost the economy of whatever state it graced by providing an attractive workforce with which to lure outside companies, helping local businesses grow, and -- through distance learning -- bringing new opportunities to fading locales.
"I compare bringing high-speed technology to rural America to bringing electricity to rural America," says Gary K. Lancaster.
Roe and Goodwin required four things to make their experiment work: supportive political leadership; a willing technology industry; a clean, well-lighted place; and an open-minded community-college and university system. In 1994, Governor Roy Romer and the state legislature approved a master plan that Goodwin had drawn up in just 60 days. Lucent Technologies and Cisco Systems signed up, clearing a path for other technology companies. And the closure of Lowry Air Force Base opened up large tracts of land and numerous buildings to civilian use.
The academic institutions proved the toughest nuts to crack. "The community-college presidents ate us alive. They accused us of trying to steal their programs," says Goodwin, who left the Center in August 1999 to create a similar organization for the South Orange County Community College District, in California, on the closed Tustin Marine Corps Air Station.
As Goodwin sees it, the college administrators were in denial over the failure of their own training initiatives. One community college offered an electronics program with no courses in microprocessor technology, despite the presence of an Intel facility nearby. "The private sector wouldn't hire students from that program, and word got around that students shouldn't go to school there," he says.
Goodwin and Roe countered the resistance by arranging conversations between college presidents and the businesspeople who they hope will hire their graduates. Academic ears listened as the private sector described its needs, and academic eyes began to open.
But even after everyone was on board, considerable assembly was still required. "At the beginning I was very concerned about the notion of coordinating many institutions," says Jo Roth, vice-president of student, faculty, and staff services at the Community College of Aurora. "It involved coordinating computer systems, registration, admissions, financial aid, and advising. But everyone was willing to be flexible, and we all made it happen."
Perhaps the most ambitious piece of Roe and Goodwin's vision -- a distance-learning program that aims to revitalize Colorado's most ailing towns -- is becoming a reality, thanks to HEAT's Convergent Technologies Innovations Laboratory, or CTIL. Funded with $11 million from Lucent and $9 million from the state, CTIL is a national showcase for data-networking, Internet, and video-communications technologies that resides deep in the heart of HEAT's campus. Yet, because of it, learning is happening in distant Julesburg, a town of 1,300 souls near the Nebraska border, a three-hour drive from the Center.
Agriculture's declining fortunes have taken their toll on Julesburg, whose residents have for generations earned their livelihood raising wheat, beef cattle, alfalfa, corn, and sugar beets. And although the construction of a prison nearby created some new, albeit unglamorous, jobs, "young people don't really like to stay here," says Murl Abts, who runs a combination pharmacy and gift-and-flower shop in town.
But Julesburg -- and towns like it -- are now poised to become HEAT outposts. CTIL has taken over a century-old building in Julesburg -- a onetime national bank turned clothing store turned beauty parlor. The Center is transforming the building into the Sedgwick County Rural Technology Academy, using funds provided by Lucent and the state. When the renovation is complete and fiber-optic wiring is installed, local students will be able to take distance-learning courses in the former bank.
A handful of local high school students offer residents a preview of what to expect. Having recently traveled to the HEAT campus for courses in Web development, the students are now back in Julesburg and building a 3-D version of their hometown online. Soon visitors from around the world will be able to take a mouse-driven tour of Julesburg's streets, browse its antiques and clothing stores, and buy from its merchants, wielding credit cards over secure Web sites.
"I compare bringing high-speed technology to rural America to bringing electricity to rural America," says Gary K. Lancaster, chairman of the Sedgwick County Technology Board, which is helping to oversee development of the Rural Technology Academy. He expects that townspeople will be able to hatch home-based businesses after high-speed Internet lines have been installed. And the town hopes to attract small businesses with its newly trained high-tech labor pool and its high-quality, affordable education program.
