West Virginia Executive Fall 2017 | Page 54

Glenville State College Glenville State College now offers an energy and land management concentration as part of its natural resource management major through the school’s land resources department. This concentration is designed for students interested in working in land use development, management and planning. Graduates of this program are able to find a large number of career opportunities at the state level and with federal government agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Bureau of Land Management, and will also be prepared for private industry positions. In order to better prepare students, those in the new concentration are now required to complete two classes in Geographical Information Systems (GIS), and a greater emphasis has been put on deed research in their concentration capstone course. In utilizing both GIS and the fundamentals of title abstracting, students in this program will provide West Virginia businesses with the versatility they seek in an employee. Marshall University Marshall University is now offering a bachelor of business administration degree in entrepreneurship through the Lewis College of Business. This interdisciplinary program incorporates management, finance, accounting, economics, marketing and the legal environment. Students benefit from the entrepreneurship major or minor through the study of several disciplines with particular focus on creativity, innovation, opportunity recognition, risk management, sourcing capital and preparing for succession and/or harvesting opportunities. Accordingly, students can acquire the knowledge, skills and experience necessary to prepare and launch a new venture, quickly integrate with an existing enterprise and provide creative and innovative solutions and contributions as an entrepreneur or a corporate intrapreneur. The curriculum focuses on critical thinking and analytical skills, communication, leadership, teambuilding, quantitative and qualitative analysis and research skills. 52 WEST VIRGINIA EXECUTIVE Mountwest Community & Technical College Pierpont Community & Technical College Students seeking an associate’s degree in health care informatics at Mountwest Community & Technical College will acquire an education in both technology and health care to prepare them for jobs in many different types of health care environments, including insurance and pharmacy. This program’s curriculum prepares individuals for employment as specialists in installation, data management, data archiving/ retrieval, system design and support and computer training for medical information systems. Students graduating with a degree in health care informatics can find a variety of job opportunities in this field, from helping build infrastructures with the electronic health record to implementing systems in medical practices such as billing suites, data retrieval, data analysis and advanced training of personnel with the use of electronic health records. Pierpont Community & Technical College has introduced a new veterinary assistant program that requires less on- the-job training for students and more easily integrates new employees into a veterinary hospital environment. This innovative program provides graduates with realistic expectations about working in a veterinary hospital and reduces employee turnover. Graduation from the program will allow students to pursue a career as a veterinary or laboratory assistant in a veterinary clinic, hospital, shelter or laboratory. Students wishing to pursue an assoc iate’s degree can also apply to the school’s veterinary technology program. The veterinary program was ranked a 2017 Top Thirty Program in the U.S. by VeterinarianEDU.org. New River Community and Technical College West Virginia University Potomac State College’s four-year sustainable agriculture entrepreneurship (SAGE) program allows students to customize their learning experience to meet the booming local food and farm-to-table movements. SAGE provides students with hands-on experience that extends the growing seasons with crop production in high tunnels and greenhouses and taps into specialty crops, livestock production and agri-tourism ventures that build unique and profitable revenue streams to farms throughout the seasons. The SAGE program is unique as it immerses students into the entire agri-business mindset, providing the opportunity to physically work on multiple farming projects while learning the business model framework of starting, marketing, operating and adapting in an agri-business climate. “SAGE is one of our signature programs that is designed to explore the opportunities for financial success in agriculture for our students, which in turn supports economic growth in the region and the state,” says Campus President Jennifer Orlikoff. This year, New River Community and Technical College received funding for electric distribution engineering technology (EDET) students to participate in the state’s Learn and Earn program through a new co-op/ apprentice program with American Electric Equipment out of Beckley, WV. The state-sponsored grant program gives students in technical degree programs the opportunity to work as paid interns at sponsoring companies while in school. A certificate in EDET provides students with the technical skills needed for careers in the electric, cable and telephone, construction, subcontracting, railroad and oil and gas industries. Students benefit from instructors with extensive experience in the industry and are prepared for in-demand, high- paying careers. Potomac State College of WVU