Central Georgia Technical College’s (CGTC) Office of Global Initiatives recently came to the end of a three-year contract with Kabul Polytechnic University in Afghanistan, in which the College’s Computer Technology faculty developed curriculum and provided technical assistance to create an Information Technology (IT) associate degree program aimed at improving student skills for the country’s labor market.

CGTC’s partnership with KPU began in 2015, when the University of Massachusetts selected the College, after a highly competitive bidding process, to become one of two two-year colleges in the United States to serve as a sub-contractor for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) multi-million dollar grant to re-establish and improve the educational system in war-torn Afghanistan.

CGTC faculty provided technical assistance to faculty and staff at KPU under USAID’s University Support and Workforce Development Program (USWDP).

In March 2017, CGTC Computer Technology program division head, Bridget Willis, instructor, Felicia Everidge, and executive vice president Jeff Scruggs, traveled to Baku, Azerbaijan, to work face-to-face with KPU and its faculty on curriculum instruction for the two-year IT degree.

Faculty from both institutions met in Azerbaijan as a mutually accepted training location. In the two years between CGTC’s selection and its trip, both institutions laid the groundwork to assess technologies at KPU. After an initial on-site technology inventory in Kabul in the grant’s first year, CGTC has been mentoring faculty and delivering videotaped classroom presentations for KPU review and utilization.

In the last year, and during its final trip to Afghanistan in spring of 2018, CGTC faculty provided guidance on curriculum assessment and review. Scruggs led faculty members Shane Knighton and Bridget Willis to deliver on-site instruction and training in Kabul and to finalize curriculum for use in KPU’s ongoing program.

Rick Hutto, executive director of the Office of Global Initiatives, said the delivery of this pedagogical support was “of maximum benefit to their students and to Afghanistan’s employers.”

Evaluating content aligned with labor-market skill needs of Afghanistan was a key component to CGTC’s involvement, Hutto said. Figures from the initial cohort of graduates indicated that 40 percent of the students who graduated had jobs lined up upon completion.

The first cohort of graduates from the program graduated in the spring of 2017 and the second cohort completed the program in 2018. A third cohort will officially complete the CGTC-assisted programs this spring.