Marco Velazquez-Vazquez set the bar high for student-athletes

The NJCAA Headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo., recently announced recipients of the 2011-2012 NJCAA Academic Student-Athlete Awards. Dakota County Technical College’s Marco Velazquez-Vazquez earned a 3.77 GPA, receiving the NJCAA Award for Exemplary Academic Achievement. “It was amazing to receive the award,” said Velazquez-Vazquez. “Working full-time and attending school full-time is a lot of pressure. I feel relieved that my hard work has paid off.”

Velazquez-Vazquez, from Southwest High School, earned an associate degree in the Automotive Technician program last spring. Since he began at DCTC in the fall of 2009, he has been named to the president’s list every semester, also an honor that acknowledges high academic achievement.

“Not only has Marco set a high standard with grades, he was a great team member and the most unselfish, hardworking teammate you could ask for,” said Cam Stoltz, Head Soccer Coach. “He is an example of someone who can do it all and do it all well.”

Nearly 60,000 student-athletes competed in the NJCAA during the 2011-2012 academic year, but only 1,680 student-athletes met the requirements for individual academic honors. The NJCAA academic awards have been recognizing student-athletes’ academic success since 1983.

Academic Student-Athlete Awards

The NJCAA Academic Student-Athlete Awards were previously known as NJCAA Academic All-American honors. The NJCAA has renamed its academic awards program to the following:

NJCAA Pinnacle Award for Academic Excellence (4.00 GPA on a 4.00 scale)

NJCAA Award for Superior Academic Achievement (3.80 to 3.99 on a 4.00 scale)

NJCAA Award for Exemplary Academic Achievement (3.60 to 3.79 on a 4.00 scale)

About NJCAA 

Since 1938 the National Junior College Athletic Association has been the governing body of two-year college athletics, offering athletic and academic opportunities to college students. Now entering its 75^th anniversary, the NJCAA is the second largest national intercollegiate athletic organization in the United States with over 500 member schools in 43 states. Each year over 60,000 student-athletes compete in one of 28 different sports and the organization sponsors 48 national championship events and nine football bowl games. NJCAA Headquarters has been located in Colorado Springs, Colo., since 1985.

For more information about Blue Knights Athletics at DCTC, contact:

• Cam Stoltz
  Head Soccer Coach and Athletic Director
  651-423-8462

Photo Courtesy: saintsbaseball.com

Former DCTC Blue Knights pitcher Luke Anderson signed a professional contract with the St. Paul Saints, the American Association baseball club announced Tuesday, June 26.

The 23-year-old right-handed pitcher from Savage, Minn., played for the Blue Knights during the 2008-2009 season. He finished the season with a 7-0 record, a 3.19 ERA and 50 strikeouts in 48 innings. Anderson went on to play three seasons for the North Dakota State University Bisons, an NCAA Division I team.

Anderson will be in uniform with the Saints tonight at 7:05 p.m. against the Sioux City Explorers at Midway Stadium. For more information on the St. Paul Saints or to view their 2012 schedule, visit saintsbaseball.com.

For more information about Blue Knights Baseball at DCTC, contact:

• Wes Crawford
  Head Baseball Coach
  651-423-8223

Star Tribune Editorial

Minnesota’s May jobless rate stood at about 5.6 percent, according to state figures. Yet manufacturing employers report that they have unfilled positions because of a lack of qualified applicants.

What’s wrong with this picture? And what can be done to match more of the unemployed with those available jobs?

Two colleges in Dakota County recently announced a partnership that will help fill the jobs-skill gap. Dakota County Technical College and Inver Hills Community College agreed to provide customized, on-site training and continuing education for businesses.

The colleges will provide “rapid response” training that can occur at the college or at a business and can be arranged quickly depending on the complexity of the program. The innovative effort highlights the types of things that must be done throughout the state’s higher-education system for students, the unemployed and for future economic development.

Read full article

For more information about Continuing Education & Customized Training at DCTC, contact:

• Patrick McQuillan
  Dean of CT and Continuing Education
  651-423-8318

Nanoscience Technology program profiled in IEEE Nanotechnology Magazine

The Nanoscience Technology program at Dakota County Technical College was spotlighted in the June 2012 issue of IEEE Nanotechnology Magazine, a publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Xplore Digital Library. In an article titled, “Closing the Nanotechnology Workforce Gap,” Dean Hart, the chief commercial officer for NanoInk, Inc., writes about how the NanoProfessor Nanoscience Education Program is helping solve a massive workforce shortfall confronting the nanotechnology industry.

Hart notes that the industry is looking at a “global demand of 6 million nanotechnology workers by 2020; however, only 400,000 nanotech workers are currently in the global workforce, and most of them are at the Ph.D. level conducting some form of research. For myriad of emerging nanotech companies to become commercially viable entities, they must find non-Ph.D. human capital. Few nanotech companies could sustain long-term commercial success if non Ph.D.-based human capital was unavailable.”

The DCTC Nanoscience Technology program, headed by Deb Newberry, took on the role of piloting NanoProfessor in 2010. NanoProfessor proved an instant success, providing in-depth experimental opportunities to students entering Newberry’s groundbreaking program.

“The NanoProfessor System has been used by faculty and college and high school students for defined experiments as well as independent research. It is an amazing set of equipment—it is hard to keep students away from it, and we have now set up additional lab time for students to use the equipment outside of the designated class time,” said Newberry, who also serves as the director of Nano-Link, a Midwest regional center whose primary mission is providing topical, modularized format nanoscience content for use by high school and college educators as well as by industry professionals.

To learn more about the wonders of nanotechnology, the educational benefits of NanoProfessor, and the leading-edge curriculum of the DCTC Nanoscience Technology program, please read Dean Hart’s entire article: “Closing the Nanotechnology Workforce Gap.”

To learn more about Nanoscience Technology at DCTC, contact:

• Deb Newberry
  Nanoscience Technololgy Director
  651-423-8328

Deb Newberry | Director | Nanoscience Technology at DCTC

TKDA’s Brian Kelley and Lon Fiedler publish article on solar heating

Photovoltaic solar installation at Ames Soccer Complex on DCTC Rosemount campus

Dakota County Technical College was featured in the April 2012 issue of American School & University magazine in the article, “Solar Heating Considerations for Green Schools,” by Brian Kelley, an education group manager at TKDA, and Lon Fiedler, a senior registered architect at the same firm, which is headquartered in St. Paul, Minn., and offers a full range of engineering, architectural and planning services.

Both Kelley and Fiedler wrote about two solar projects they worked on at the college’s main campus in Rosemount, Minn. The first project centered on designing a photovoltaic solar station that provides electrical power to the press box and concession area for the Ames Soccer Complex. The second project involved erecting a solar thermal installation that delivers supplemental heating to the state-of-the-art greenhouse used by students in the DCTC Landscape Horticulture program.

Click “Solar Heating Considerations for Green Schools” to read the entire article on the ASU website. You can also read the April 2012 digital edition of ASU magazine by following this LINK and clicking the “archive” button in the horizontal menu above the June 2012 issue. You can then select April 2012 from a pop-up window menu. Founded in 1928, American School & University has served as a knowledge resource for best practices related to facilities in K-12 and higher education.

Greenhouse with roof-mounted solar panels on DCTC Rosemount campus

To learn more about Landscape Horticulture at DCTC, contact:

• Matt Brooks
  Landscape Horticulture Instructor
  651-423-8392
• Jeff Kleinboehl
  Landscape Horticulture Instructor
  651-423-8478
• Catherine Grant
  Landscape Horticulture Instructor
  651-423-8478

Or visit the Landscape Horticulture blog to get an insider’s look at the program.

To learn more about Ames Soccer Complex operations and solar power applications at DCTC, contact:

• Paul DeMuth
  Director of Operations
  651-423-8370