Lisa Wicoff was given the green light to pursue three new courses at Allen Community College’s board of trustees meeting Tuesday evening.
Wicoff is dean of the college’s Career Technology Center and Industry Partnerships.
To complement the school’s healthcare curriculum, Wicoff proposed a gerontology/aging specialist program.
“We want our elderly to have the best of care,” Wicoff said.
Wicoff noted long-term care facilities and nursing homes need such professionals and that the program is a natural steppingstone for current nurse’s aides and medication aides who want to further their careers.
Ninety-nine percent of nursing homes currently have job openings, Wicoff said.
“We’ve got to start growing our own professionals,” she said.
The program would also include training for those who want to become administrators in facilities for the elderly, she said, as well as home health services and agencies serving the elderly and disabled.
Wicoff taps the expertise of her sister, Leslie Weir, director of Iola’s Heartland Meadows, an assisted living facility, who also teaches some of Wicoff’s courses.
The new course includes hospice care, rehabilitative care for the disabled, the responsibilities of an activities director, and how to manage social services. Classes would include in-person field experience under the direction of licensed nursing staff at area facilities.
ACC’s two-year program would differ from a four-year gerontology degree “which is typically related to sociology. They’re more theoretical,” as opposed to hands-on, Wicoff said.
Classes would be a hybrid of online and face-to-face.
“There’s not a program like this within the state,” Wicoff said.
With approval by the Kansas Board of Education, the program could begin as early as this summer.
Wicoff also has in mind a new program for CTE’s machining and manufacturing division called Energy Industry Fundaments, which would teach students about the fundamentals of the energy industry. And for the Center’s Automation Technology division, a class called AC/DC Circuits would provide instruction on the basics of direct and alternating current circuits and include courses on AC/DC circuits, and industrial wiring.
