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Delaware County Community College’s STEM Center
Delaware County Community College’s STEM Center-2
MEDIA — Today’s industrial engineer is a lot different from his predecessors.
“It used to be an industrial mechanic with a couple of wrenches, running around keeping the factory going,” said Jerry Parker, president of Delaware County Community College.
Now, it’s a person with computer, math and science skills, who’s more likely to reprogram a machine than tighten a bolt on it.
The result is that science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, education is more important than ever.
That’s why DCCC has created its STEM Center, a four-story building that houses 10 science labs, three computer-aided design labs, 17 classrooms and a fitness center in its 105,000 square feet. The college has been using the building since January, getting the bugs out and applying finishing touches. A grand opening event is set for next month.
The building is still awaiting the installation, and literally the planting, of a green roof that will occupy one quarter of the building’s topside and help the building qualify for silver certification under the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program.
The use of natural light in the building, another necessary ingredient for its LEED certification, is something that Philip Rancallo, a second-year architecture student from Upper Darby, finds appealing.
“I like how open most of the area is,” Rancallo said.
The building’s CAD labs feature Autodesk Inc.’s Revit Architecture software, which Larry Woodward, a professor of architecture and construction management, said creates a “virtual reality for engineers and designers.”
Woodard said one of his second-year students ran into the owner of a construction company over holiday break and when the person found out the student knew Revit, he offered him a summer job to train the rest of his employees in it.
“They’re not hiring him as an architect,” Woodward said. “They’re hiring him as someone who will bring this technology into their firm.”
The STEM Center is the larger of two buildings in DCCC’s STEM Complex. The other is the two story, 32,000-square-foot Advanced Technology Center, which opened last October.
The ATC features more hands-on labs than the STEM Center, giving students the chance to learn carpentry, electrical skills, automotive technology, heating, ventilation and air-conditioning skills, and mechanical technology, among other things.
The building also is home to a program DCCC developed in conjunction with the Boeing Co. to train workers in sheet-metal and composite-material fabrication for Boeing’s helicopter plant in Ridley, and houses the college’s process-technology program, which provides training for jobs at such places as Sunoco Inc.’s refineries.
Prior to opening the ATC, its programs were housed at the college’s Malin Road Center, a former vocational/technical school in Broomall.
The school was showing its age and DCCC wanted to bring the programs back to its main campus in Media so students would have easier access to its administrative offices and support services.
That, plus the fact that some of the labs on DCCC’s main campus dated to 1974 when the campus was constructed and couldn’t be upgraded in their existing locations, made the college decide to build the STEM Complex.
“The kids were coming out of high schools with better labs than we had,” Parker said.
The complex cost $60 million, most of which was used to construct the two buildings, but some of which is being used to convert some old labs on DVCC’s main campus into classrooms.
The college got about half the money from the state, with the rest coming from its local sponsors, which are 11 of the 15 school districts in Delaware County, students and private contributors, including SAP America Inc. in Newtown Square, Sunoco and Harrah’s Chester.
DVCC had hoped to raise $6.5 million from private contributors, but lowered that goal to $4.5 million and is still trying to reach that goal.
“We hope to raise money to continue to outfit the vacated spaces,” Parker said.
DVCC is an area pioneer in STEM education, having worked with another area proponent of it, the Delaware Valley Resource Center, for more than 20 years.
Tony Girifalco, the DVIRC’s executive vice president, said the STEM Complex is one of several complexes of its type opened by area schools in the past five years or so. The others include the Advanced Technology Center at Montgomery County Community College, Community College of Philadelphia’s Center for Business and Industry and the Antoinette Iadarola Center for Science, Education and Technology at Cabrini College.
“It’s a great step for the college and for the region and calling it a STEM Center or a STEM Complex gives you a visible, tangible thing that draws attention to the importance of STEM … education,” Girifalco said. “We’re very excited about it.”