VOLUME 2 : NUMBER 32 : AUGUST 10, 1984 s

AUG 1 4 1984

HAVE A HAPPY JACKIE!
Jackie Sandy, counsellor extraordinaire, active V.I.A. member and Shop
Steward, advocate for handicapped training and program initiator for female
involvement in non-traditional vocational programs, is leaving the V.V.I, on
1983 August 13 for a year's leave. She and her husband, Jerry, will be in the
south of France while Jerry is completing his sabbatical from U.B.C.
Good luck, relax, enjoy, and for those who have fond memories of
Aux-en-Province, be prepared for good wine and friendly encounters.

All faculty and staff are invited to a farewell coffee party for Jackie Sandy
on Monday, 1984 August 13, at 14:30 in the Assembly Hall (Room 240).

MEL/JV
AUTO DOCTOR
Do you have car problems? Perhaps the Auto Mechanics Department at King
Edward Campus can be of help. There are some limitations, however, since the
work nature must benefit students and be of the type they need experience on;
domestic and popular foreign makes are preferred; the type of repairs may
dictate how quickly your request can be accommodated. Give us a call at
875-8202.

HO
LIBRARY ACQUISITIONS
The following materials are now available in the Library:
Information Processing

Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties 1984
The New Office Etiquette
The World of Learning 1982/83

VCC-VANCOUVER VOCATIONAL INSTITUTE
JOB OPPORTUNITIES LIBRARY
WI - Department Head - Power Engineering - Apply in writing by 1984
October 12.

Ministry of Education Coordinators $32,232 - $36,336
Competition H84:819-01 - Construction Programs
Competition H84:820-01 - Mechanical § Fabrications Programs

Apply in writing by 1984 August 22 to Public Service Commission, 544 Michigan
Street, Victoria, B.C. V8V 1S3

CQMMUmTY

COLLEGE Tl/PyP*
Vancouver

Vocational

Institute

"

INDUSTRY SPEAKS TO TWO-YEAR COLLEGES ABOUT HIGH TECHNOLOGY, by James P. Long
Staying up-to-date in post-secondary occupational education these days means

high technology.
When the 32 member colleges of the National Post-secondary Alliance set higli
technology as their theme and focus for 1982/83, their Alliance director was
put on the spot. His challenge -- how to help a consortium of colleges,
spread out from Alaska to Florida and from Texas to Illinois, revitalize
themselves and their technical training programs to suit current and future
high technology industry employment needs.
The answer was a series of seven regional two-day conferences during which
industry leaders spoke, and college administrators listened. Industry
representatives gladly agreed to participate. More than 40 companies became
involved. They included: Control Data, IBM, General Motors, Bell
Laboratories, Rockwell International, Motorola, Cincinnati Milacron,
Westinghouse, Martin-Marietta, Bendix, Sony, International Laser Systems,
Western Electric, Texas Instruments, Bechtel, United Technologies, Sandoz,
Fermilab, Mead and others.
Industry was asked to respond to two basic questions:

(1) What does your company do using high technology?
and
(2) What can colleges do to prepare students for jobs in companies like yours?
The seven conferences were filled with terms such as robotics, CAD/CAM,
lasers, fiber optics, electronics, telecommunications, biomedical engineering,
mircroprocessors, videodiscs, and micro-computers. Each speaker was given
approximately one hour; question and answer sessions lasted another hour to
provide for in-depth understanding. Conferences were held in Dallas, Texas;
Nelsonville, Ohio; Chicago, Illinois; Saddlebrook, New Jersey; Orlando,
Florida; Oakland, California; and Greensboro, North Carolina. Approximately
800 college leaders attended.
Here are some of the things learned from industry during these national
conferences on high technology. What follows is a brief list of twelve
straight-forward conclusions about what was learned. These conclusions are
necessarily over-simplified, but they do represent the best thinking of the
experts who spoke. Statements are not attributed to any specific expert or
any specific company, but it's not important to do so. The statements stand
on their own merits. Here is one person's interpretation of the twelve most
important things learned from the seven high-technology conferences.

1. INDUSTRY IS INTO HIGH-TECH TRAINING -- Industry has now entered the
field of education in a big way totrain people for high-technology
jobs. Why? Because it is not satisifed with the performance of many
people we train -- even though we're the professional educators. In the
process, industry often makes a profit or at least saves money by doing
its own training. Industry will soon be a major force in competition
with colleges for students in high-technology education.

2. COMPUTERS ARE AT THE CORE -- Computers are at the core of all
high-technology fields. Microprocessors chips are being used everywhere
and are revolutionizing manufacturing, communications, entertainment, and
service occupations.

3. NOT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW PROGRAMMING -- Not everyone will need to
know computer programming, but it's hard to imagine an occupation that
will not soon require some keyboarding skills without excessive computer
phobia. Personal computers and telephone modems are now commonplace.

PROGRAMMING JOES WILL INCREASE DRAMATICALLY -- Although not everyone
will need to know programming, the number of programming jobs will
increase dramatically. Despite high unemployment overall, one-quarter of
a million good programmers could find jobs this year, and that figure
will rise to nearly one million a year by 1990.

5. NO PHARMACEUTICAL/BIOMEDICAL TECHNICIANS -- A negative signal came to
us from the pharmaceutical and bio-medical engineering fields. The
two-year technician doesn't fit in so well here, it appears. Granted
that hospitals will continue to employ x-ray and lab technicians, as well

as nurses for awhile, yet the medical/health field will not add a large
number of jobs for two year college graduates as a result of high
technology. Any large growth will be in professional, not
paraprofessional jobs.

6. ROBOTICS HAS COME OF AGE -- Robotics has finally come of age in
industry after nearly 30 years of struggling to be born. Robots are not
just a fad; they will take over many dirty, dangerous, repetitive jobs,
and they will, in the process, create an equal number of new jobs needed
to program, maintain, and design robots. The reprogrammable robot will
make it economically feasible to manufacture more specialty products in
small amounts.

7. NO MORE DRAFTING TABLES -- CAD is in the process of revolutionizing
drafting, design, and engineering jobs. Don't buy stock in companies
that make drafting tables. The CAD system will soon do the T-square and
other drafting tools what the calculator did to the slide rule. Training
for drafters, designers, and engineers will still include some board
experience, but it must also provide some computer-assisted equipment
experiences.

8. SEMI-CONDUCTORS ARE STILL HOT -- The semi-conductor industry is still
"hot". As more chips with larger memories are demanded, the industry
will continue to search for ways to turn silicon sand into random access
memory devices and mass produce them at low cost. Many technical jobs
will be created to design, manufacture, and test semi-conductor devices.

9. PROPRIETARY (PRIVATE) SCHOOLS DO IT BETTER -- The electronics industry
is frequently disappointed with the graduates of two-year colleges
compared to the graduates of six-month proprietary schools. The
challenge to upgrade college faculty and equipment m electronics is
vitally important.

10. COMMUNICATIONS IS EXPLODING -- The communications industry is growing
and changing rapidly. Wires and cables for transporting sound and
pictures have begun to yield to microwaves, optical fibres, and
satellites. We can now make personal telephone calls from commercial
planes in flight. The microprocessor chip is making possible so many
innovations that few telecommunications jobs of five years ago will be m
existence five years from now. There will be many openings for
technicians in the communications field. Perhaps a new program should be
designed and offered in communications technology.

11. AEROSPACE AND MILITARY LEAD THE WAY -- The aerospace industry,
especially the military portion of it, is setting trends and creating
innovations in the use of lasers, computers, CAD/CAM robots, and also m
the training and development of its employess through videodisc and other
interactive, computer assisted, television-mediated learning systems.
The military has become a first-rate technical educator.

12. SOFTWARE IS IN A PREDICAMENT -- The software industry is in a
predicament. Programming the required user-friendly software takes a
great deal of time and consequently a great deal of money. The costs of
development are difficult to recover from sales when product demand
changes almost daily. Eventually, there will be some major breakthroughs
to allow users to interface directly with computers through high level
languages and even through the spoken word. The development of such
systems will eventually reduce the demand for programmers, although this
won't happen until after the turn of the century. In the meantime
everyone is "passing the buck" about who should develop software. The
hardware manufacturers want users to spend thousands of hours creating a
program, then trade it for a new printer.
The publishing houses are afraid to invest the necessary money into anything
so "soft" since all their experience is m "hard" copy. Educators don't have
in place a viable reward system for software development. Professors get
tenure if they publish a book, but no university reward for inventing a new
Visicalc.
These twelve conclusions, opinions, predictions, or suggestions just listed
are the significant ideas given by industry leaders to college administrators
during a series of national conferences on high technology.

NOTE:
DR. JAMES P. LONG DIRECTS THE NATIONAL POST-SECONDARY ALLIANCE, A NATIONWIDE
CONSORTIUM OF COMMUNITY AND TECHNICAL COLLEGES INTERESTED IN STAYING ON THE
CUTTING EDGE OF POST-SECONDARY OCCUPATIONAL EDUCATION THROUGH COOPERATIVE
OFFSETS.

MEL