On Oct. 21, Penn College was host to the Pennsylvania Association of Welding Educators' committee meeting for the fall semester of 2005.
The PAWE is a newly formed collective of welding educators from secondary education across the state. The group was initially conceived and formed through the Pennsylvania Department of Education, presented to secondary educators statewide, and developed further based on the interests of these educators to establish a forum to discuss education issues at the secondary level.
The committee's executive board is comprised of secondary educators from across the state, as well as Kathleen Showers, a representative from the state Department of Education, and David R. Cotner, a Penn College welding instructor, representing post-secondary education.
The PAWE schedules two formal meetings a year to discuss trends in education, issues in their respective areas, and standardization of educational format at the secondary level to better serve the students moving on to post-secondary education or directly to the job market.
Following the meeting on Oct. 21, the committee requested to schedule the next meeting, in March, in Penn College's Thompson Professional Development Center and tentatively to use Penn College as the primary central location for future meetings, and for opportunities to introduce the college's facilities to secondary educators across the state.