Signing of the Memorandum of Understanding

Last week in Valladolid ended with the official signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between AB Tech and ITSVA. It was an exciting time and we can't wait to move forward with our plans to more openly collaborate with ITSVA!

Below, you can see Asheville - Buncombe Technical Community College President Dr. Betty Young and C.P. Raúl Augusto Mendoza Alcocer Director General del ITSVA signing the MOU.
















To learn more about our new MOU with ITSVA, see below!

Focus groups at ITSVA

A main objective of our trip was to meet with individual areas at ITSVA to determine ways we could work together. These areas are our Small Business Center, Nursing, Network Technology and Geospatial Technologies. We came out of these focus groups with some great ideas, goals and objectives.



Below you can see a short slide show of my part of the presentation to the ITSVA faculty, staff and students outlining how we will collaborate in the GIS area in the future.

Dzitnup Elementary School

Yesterday, we visited a rural elementary school in Dzitnup and donated several bags of school supplies. The kids were happy and excited about having visitors. They recited poems and stories and we all had a great time. Thanks to Pam Silvers and Sarah Nie for helping with the supplies we were able to bring down for the school.



More information coming soon about the agreement signed yesterday between ITSVA and ABTech!

Day 3 at ITSVA

On Monday, Pete Kennedy and Russ Yelton gave presentations to the ITSVA faculty, staff, and students. Afterwards, we split into small focus groups to discuss ways our colleges would work together. These groups focused on Network Technologies, the Small Business Center, English as a second language, and Geographic Information Systems.

In my GIS focus group, I met with Mario Rosado Balam and Renaw De Jesus Arleo Vivas from the state of the Yucatan Agriculture Department and Vicente Chimal Couoh from the City of Valladolid. The folks from the Agriculture department are using GPS in a program called Procampo where they are working with local farmers to keep them farming and not move to the cities. The city of Valladolid hopes to use GIS and GPS to map the infrastructure of the city - which is sorely needed. Through these projects we hope to offer students with international work experience through internships in Mexico and working online with our counterparts in Mexico. There will also be grade opportunities for training local people in using these technologies uing online and traditional classes through faculty exchanges.

Yucatan Travels

We've been busy... check out where we've gone so far ...


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Arrival in Valladolid, Mexico

The Asheville Sister Cities and Asheville - Buncombe Technical Community College delegates arrivied in Valladolid, Mexico last night and were greeted with open arms from our friends at ITSVA - Instituto Tecnológico Superior de Valladolid. We spent last night relaxing and enjoying each others company before visitng ITSVA today.


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While at ITSVA today, we learned a lot of general information about the school and toured the campus including seeing 2 new buildings not yet in service. Dr. Young also addressed the ITSVA faculty, staff and students with a short presentation about AB Tec. Monday we will start more focused discussion groups on how we can grow the relationship between our schools. I will be leading a discussion / demonstration /workshop on GIS with a group of students and faculty studying computer science. It should be lots of fun!

Visitors from Valladolid Mexico

This summer, AB Tech was lucky to have visitors from one of Asheville's Sister Cities, Valladolid, Yucatan Mexico. There were 8 delegates from a technical school similar to AB Tech called the Instituto Technologico Superior de Valladolid. There were also 2 visitors from University De Valladolid. This trip followed a trip taken by Dr. Sharon Morrissey to Valladolid to begin a dialogue on how our schools can work together in the future with faculty and student exchanges.

Below - Raul Mendoza Alcocer the Director (like our President) of Instituto Technologico Superior de Valladolid with our own Vice President Dr. Sharon Morrissey pointing at a map of Asheville and Valladolid made by our Geospatial Technology Instructor Pete Kennedy.

Students and Faculty visited the Business Computer Technology Division one morning and learned about all our programs. Below is a slide show of their visit to our deparment. The group visited a Web Technologies class and of course visitied the GIS lab where we showed them maps of places they were visiting during their trip and gave them a short demonstration of some of the Geospatial Technologies we teach here in our certificate program.

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Dr. Morrissey and some others outlined the following as potential future partnership opportunities we will continue to explore with our friends from Valladolid.

(1) A return visit to Valladolid in February 2008 (AB Tech faculty and
students, Sister Cities members), staying with home hosts.
(2) ITSVA exchange students to spend 6 months or 1 year at AB Tech,
studying ESL and/or a curriculum program (hospitality, culinary, engineering,
management/business administration, networking, computer technologies,
HVAC).
(3) ITSVA faculty members to spend 2-4 weeks at AB Tech, shadowing our
faculty members in networking, culinary, hotel & restaurant management, mechanical
engineering, electrical engineering, HVAC.
(4) Mentor ITSVA in development of a Small Business Incubator/Student
Incubator program. (Raul plans to return to learn more about incubator
programs in the US.)
(5) Establish a CISCO Networking Academy at ITSVA.
(6) AB Tech humanities & foreign language students to study abroad in
Valladolid, staying with home hosts.
(7) AB Tech faculty to study the culture, cuisine, tourism industry,
history of Valladolid, staying with home hosts.