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Lincoln Trail College Broadband Telecom students are taking the skills they’ve learned in the classroom and applying them on the job. They’re completing an apprenticeship with the Clarksville Mutual Telephone Company by doing fiber-to-the-home installations.
LTC’s students are taking the fiber from the ground and splicing it into a box on the side of the customer’s house. From there, they’ll take the fiber inside the home and get it ready so the customer can have high-speed internet access.
Owner Jeff Carpenter says the project started about a year ago when a construction company built their outside plant and laid fiber in the area. He says it is a big project for one person to complete and after he saw that Lincoln Trail College has worked on similar projects, he reached out and the students jumped in right away.
“From the day they came in, we started to work. The instructor worked with them and he was able to stop and teach – ‘we’ve talked about this before in class, this is how it actually looks, this is what we’re doing.’ They get the benefits of this hands-on training.”
Carpenter says he’s a big proponent of hands-on education because he feels that sometimes students need that real-life experience in the field so they can see different ways of doing things.
LTC Telecom instructor Dennis York says this is giving students a chance to take everything they’ve learned in the lab, in the classroom, and in books and put it to use in the field, dealing with live fiber. In addition to that, York says the students can work with real customers, something that’s very difficult to simulate in the classroom.
“They’re advancing their soft skills by talking with the customers, having a calm demeanor, explaining exactly what they’re doing, and letting the customer know how their internet or phone service is getting to them.”
Jarod Weger is one of the students working on the apprenticeship. He says working with customers has been a great experience.
“I like just being able to share the knowledge with the customers. We’re working with customers that don’t have any idea what is going on outside [for their service] and we come out and have them just watch us do the installs and we share what we know with them.”
Landon Lagow says the experience in the program and working on the apprenticeship has been great.
“I’d highly recommend it. I like it a lot because I mean you get the hands-on training and everything, but there is some book work and it's nice to have the bookwork as well because they go over the bookwork with us and then they actually apply it hands-on, and it's a really good way of learning it.”
York says that apprenticeship programs like this help the program at LTC. He says they have many Broadband Telecom partners in Illinois and Indiana and every year these businesses ask for interns to work with them in the summer where they will continue to get hands-on training while they learn.
He says there are a lot of opportunities in the broadband field.
“The Lincoln Trail College Broadband Telecom program is exceptional because it is a one-year certification program. Students can get into the workforce quickly and have a career that pays well, with great benefits, and is continuously changing so you’re always learning on the job.”
York says there are projects like this all over the country, so students have options when they graduate whether they want to stay local or travel. He says they hear from companies asking about how many students will be graduating from the program because they know the quality of students Lincoln Trail College puts out there.
