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The Composites Technician Program
The Edmonds Community College Composites Technician Certificate program is an eight week, industry driven, aerospace focused composites manufacture and repair training course. The lecture content is delivered online with labs every couple weeks. The class could be considered a "work at your own pace" or "hybrid" type curriculum, the instructor is communicating frequently with the online students, monitoring their progress and scheduling labs. This helps keep students on track and get the feeling that they are actually taking a course and not just reading online. Students are also expected to be far enough along in the online content to be ready for each lab day.
The online content is divided into three courses, Introduction to Composites, Manufacturing, and Repair. There are several units within each of these courses and students are required to take quizzes in order to progress onto the next. Each quiz requires 80% to continue on, but they can take them as many times as they like. These are not graded quizzes, but more of a vehicle to aid in their retention. After each course there is a final exam which also requires 80% to pass, but cannot be taken again and is part of their grade. We feel that this creates a reasonably robust structure that proves a student dedication to the topic yet not so difficult that they feel it to be impossible.
The program as a whole is designed to grow with the needs of the industry and we're surrounded by aerospace experts that keep us in line with the future of the composites field. Our classes are held at the Washington Aerospace Training and Research Center on Paine Field in Everett Washington. The same airport that Boeing and many others use for test flights and general operations. The restoration facility for the Seattle Museum of Flight is just across the street, and the Future of Flight Museum is on the other side of the field. We couldn't have chosen a better location to build a state of the art aerospace training center.
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