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| S C T E CHN I CA L CO L L E G E S Y S T EM ’ S
F I R S T 5 0 Y EAR S
Apprenticeship Carolina™,
along with Aiken Technical College,
Aiken County School District, and Tognum America Inc., participate
in a roundtable discussion at the White House in May 2012
Achieving the Dream is based on a belief fundamental to
technical colleges: students can succeed. “The Gates Foundation
got wind of the idea and put money behind it to let other colleges
get involved,” said Russell. “We were very fortunate to play a part
in that.”
AN OLD WORLD TOUCH
Russell feels good about another program: Apprenticeship
Carolina™. He gives it high marks. “That’s one of the things I
was most proud of during my tenure in the system office. I had
the opportunity to visit Europe a few times, specifically Germa-
ny and Austria, and got to see how the apprenticeship program
worked there. That’s really how they do a significant part of their
training in Europe, and it just makes so much sense.”
“It’s hard to imagine,” said Russell, “how you would get any
better than marrying the formal instruction in the classroom,
theory and so forth, with working under a master craftsman. To
marry those two things, theory and hands-on paid experience, is
pretty powerful.”
Apprenticeship Carolina™ wasn’t a slam-dunk. Registered ap-
prenticeships in the United States are common, but unions run
them in many states. There was hesitancy. “Well, we get into ap-
prenticeship, do we want all of the culture that might come with
it?”
Russell studied apprenticeships. “We were really missing an
opportunity to make apprenticeships work within our own sys-
tems and culture.”
When Russell was in the system office, industry leaders in the
state approached him. “They had come with companies from
Europe. They knew all about apprenticeships and wondered why
we didn’t have them. They said, ‘You know, we really do need to
get apprenticeships going in South Carolina, and we believe the
technical college system is the way to make this work. Will you
guys take it on?’”
The 2000s
F L Y I N G H I G H
