Value Added Services for Higher Education, LLC
ENDORSEMENTS
Dr. Casto
has a unique perspective of higher education, from intimate involvement in a
variety of local experiences at the institutional level to a global view of
current practices. While serving as my
academic vice president, Dr. Casto successfully led to conclusion several
initiatives, from which a few examples are given. He successfully reorganized the academic
division, resulting in a more efficient grouping of related departments into
schools. He led the development of an
electronically monitored accountability system for the college’s general
education program. He was integrally
involved in designing a plan to increase the number of students entering and
graduating from the nursing program to meet the growing demand of local
hospitals for registered nurses.
Implementation of this plan required significant new funding, so it was
presented to hospital administrators soliciting their support. Dr. Casto was instrumental in building the
collaborative relationships with the area hospitals to assist in funding the
nursing initiative. The success of these
examples, and others that could be given, illustrate the significant
organizational and leadership skills of Dr. Casto. He has the unique ability to work
collaboratively with groups to identify objectives and to effectively monitor
and manage them to a successful end.
This ability has been recognized and utilized by accreditation groups
and by the Ohio Board of Regents. I was
fortunate to have Dr. Casto as a colleague.
His talent, experience, and personable manner can add value to any
organization.
Earl Keese, Ph.D.
President, Rhodes State College, 2000-2005
I first met
Bob Casto in 1994 when I was President and Executive Director of the Ohio
Ready Mixed Concrete Association
(ORMCA). At that time I was attempting
to start a two-year concrete technology degree program. James Countryman, President of then Lima
Technical College, now known as Rhodes State College, said yes to my request to
institute a program at Rhodes State and assigned Bob Casto, Special Assistant
to the President, to assist ORMCA in its mission.
Bob Casto
was a very gracious, considerate and helpful individual in guiding us through
the process of developing the two-year degree program. He assisted us in the utilization of a DACUM
study, in curriculum development, program development, the hiring of personnel,
the planning and development of classroom space and laboratory facilities and
promotion of the program to the public and our industry membership.
From the
program’s inception in 1995 until he retired in 2006 as Vice President for
Academic Affairs, Bob Casto guided the Concrete Technology Program in its
development and growth as well as helping me and the Ohio concrete industry to
initiate and develop a Roger Jones Concrete Technology Scholarship Endowment
program.
My wife and
I, as well as Ohio’s concrete industry, will always be grateful to Dr. Casto
for his leadership, insight, vision, and dedication to helping our industry to
institute a much needed technical program at Rhodes State College.
Roger P. Jones
President, Retired
Ohio Ready Mixed Concrete Association
As co-chair
of the Career-Technical Credit Transfer (CT2) Medical Assisting Faculty Panel,
I had the pleasure of working directly with Dr. Robert Casto. Meeting Dr. Casto for the first time, I was
impressed by his friendly manner and his extensive knowledge of Ohio’s higher
education system. His experience as Vice
President for Academic Affairs at James A. Rhodes State College was
evident. During the course of many months,
working with fifteen members of the Medical Assisting Faculty Panel from both
higher education and public adult and secondary career-technical institutions,
I had the opportunity to experience Dr. Casto’s natural ability to lead. He immediately was able to connect with each
committee member both on a professional and personal level. During committee meetings, he made a point to
include everyone. He articulated issues,
asked the right questions, challenged thoughts and ideas, but valued everyone’s
opinion. He helped create a very
productive work environment. Dr. Casto
communicated effectively with everyone via email and/or phone; providing
regular updates on the direction of the CT2 Advisory Committee or information
he was collecting for the committee. He
kept very precise, thorough meeting notes and minutes, and made a point to ask
committee members for clarification.
The Ohio
Board of Regents was quite confident in Dr. Casto’s professional character,
experience, knowledge, and leadership skills when they asked him to serve as a
consultant for the House Bill 66 initiative.
If you need a consultant to help your institution achieve success, I
would recommend contacting Dr. Robert Casto.
Roy B. Anderson
Dean, Division of Allied Health and Nursing (retired)
Lorain County Community College
Elyria, Ohio
Director, Allied Health Educational Partnerships
The Center for Allied Health Education
Cleveland Clinical Health System
Cleveland, Ohio
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i39/39a02201.htm
|
From the issue dated June 6, 2008 |
After nearly three
years of planning, Ohio's higher-education officials are finalizing an ambitious
program to grant college credit for some technical courses offered at the
state's adult-education centers.
In doing so, the state
could become a model for an approach to career and technical training that
makes it easier for students to get the credentials necessary to compete in a
skilled economy.
"This is a state
that long ago recognized the need for technical education beyond high school,
but didn't have as much of an emphasis on college," says Eric D.
Fingerhut, chancellor of Ohio's Board of Regents. "So we have a very
sophisticated technical-education network which, in this day and age, now needs
to be put into more of a system that leads people into college."
The program is the
latest in a string of state efforts to more closely link work-force training
and postsecondary education, which had operated independently.
The new program,
called the Career-Technical Credit Transfer, was born in 2005. That year the
Legislature passed a law calling for the Ohio Board of Regents and the Ohio
Department of Education to create policies that would allow students to
transfer courses completed at technical centers to any higher-education
institution in the state.
Now, with the program
finally getting its legs, faculty members from technical centers and community colleges
are evaluating courses that have been submitted as candidates for credit.
They are examining
courses in five key work-force areas: automotive technology, computer
networking, electrical and mechanical engineering technology, medical
assisting, and nursing.
And if all goes as
planned, officials say that by midsummer, Ohioans studying those subjects at
adult-education centers could receive college credit for certain courses that
they could later apply toward a degree.
"It's not at all
about dumbing down the curriculum," says Julian L. Alssid, executive
director of the Workforce Strategy Center, a think tank in New York that works
closely with states looking to improve the quality of their work forces.
"It's about getting people a foot in the door who might not have otherwise
gotten to the postsecondary track."
Not all the courses
offered at Ohio's technical centers will be eligible for the new program, nor
should they be, Mr. Fingerhut says. But he believes students should receive
credit for courses that have become almost identical to their credit-bearing
counterparts at the state's community colleges.
"Many of these
[technical] schools have become enormously sophisticated in the programs they
offer, and their facilities have become more comprehensive and really, in many
respects, indistinguishable from some of our technical programs at community
colleges," Mr. Fingerhut says.
Given the similarities
in many — but not all — of the curricula, he says, it made sense to
link the courses to the community-college system. The result, he hopes, will be
"another front door" to a college education in a state that
desperately wants, and needs, to change the educational profile of its work
force.
Pathways to College
Ohio's plan is a bold
one, experts in work-force education say. But in a state with fading industry,
it makes sense.
Once, people in Ohio
could attend a vocational or technical center, get a factory job, and support
their families, Mr. Alssid says, but "those days are going away."
Ohio's plan would create "pathways" to a college degree and not treat
vocational or technical training as an end unto itself, he says.
That route is not
without its challenges.
There are
accreditation matters to consider, making sure that the curricula of the
technical courses meet the standards expected both by industry and by their
credit-bearing siblings in the state's community colleges.
And there is the
challenge of ensuring that credits from a technical center in, say, Toledo can
transfer to a community college in Cincinnati, much the same way that
community-college credits are transferable to four-year institutions around the
state.
Mr. Fingerhut says
Ohio's existing infrastructure for transferring credits from community colleges
to four-year institutions makes it easier for officials to design a similar
system for vocational and technical credits.
A Broader Debate
Ohio's move reflects
the experience of many states that face shifting economies and a shrinking pool
of jobs for workers without college credentials.
Educators in those
places are looking for ways to provide students greater access to
credit-bearing courses and, ultimately, greater career potential.
They can no longer
afford for adult students to get lost in a "hidden college," where
they move through at a fast clip to receive training and quickly return to the
work force without getting any closer to a degree.
The Ohio program could
reveal more about those students who come and go in career and technical
programs.
"We're much
better at tracking credit course hours than noncredit, so this could be
something that would also enable us to track the essential data on student
success in these programs," says Brian Pusser, an associate professor of
education at the University of Virginia.
And since
credit-bearing courses are generally accompanied by student aid, the program
could increase the amount of money available to students over time, he says.
But perhaps most
important, Mr. Pusser and Mr. Alssid say, are the intangibles.
"It is such a
challenge to go back to school," Mr. Pusser says. "When someone gets
that inspiration and says, 'I want to be a nurse,' it's got to be a very tough
moment when they've already been there for a semester or two and find out they
essentially don't have any credit toward a degree. This could be a powerful
measure."
http://chronicle.com
Section: Students
Volume 54, Issue 39, Page A21
