A Southeast Community College employee who is a facilitator/trainer for The Ohio State University recently facilitated a workshop in San Francisco for 22 Chinese educators.

John Pierce, program chair and instructor for the Energy Generation Operations program on SCC’s Milford Campus, is a part-time Developing A Curriculum facilitator/trainer. DACUM is a methodology for developing and confirming curriculum.

From Aug. 11-13, OSU hired Pierce to facilitate a DACUM workshop in the San Francisco area for a group of 22 Chinese educators to demonstrate the effectiveness of the DACUM curriculum development methodology. The group from China included faculty, curriculum specialists, vice presidents, and presidents of a variety of community and technical colleges from south-central China.

The U.S.-China Federal Association of Business Councils, based in Houston, sponsored and organized the trip, which was funded by the Chinese central government and each participant’s college. USFABC provided interpreters for Pierce and Robert Norton of OSU.

“They were a great group of professionals,” Pierce said. “We got along great, even though there was quite a language barrier. Many of the participants spoke limited English, but most did not.”

The outcome of the workshop was a chart that indicates the job duties and tasks in which educators in China typically are responsible. This chart can now be used by universities in China to help fine-tune curriculum for college teacher programs there.

Some of the institutions represented by the Chinese educators include Chongqing Vocational Institute of Engineering, Jiangxi Environmental Engineering Vocational College, Guangzhou Railway Vocational and Technical College, and Zhejiang Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. The group wanted to learn more about the DACUM process.

Pierce has been a DACUM facilitator for SCC since 2004 and a certified facilitator/trainer for the process since 2008. There are approximately 20 certified DACUM trainers in the world.

“Normally we train our own facilitators at SCC,” Pierce said. “SCC utilizes the DACUM process not only to write new curriculum for each program of study, but also to affirm existing curriculum conforms to their respective industry’s needs. This is an important part of why SCC is ranked so high nationally in terms of quality of instruction and (job) placement.”