Not so Distant Learning

Distance learning and distance recruiting were on the minds of a number of people attending a session on the topic. The panel, including representatives from fire-protection firms, universities and professional associations who provide such offerings, universally noted the movement is growing slowly but steadily.

An interesting twist brought up by Dave Lucht of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, which has been offering distance learning programs for 10 years, was the fact that many Midwestern and West Coast firms complain that they can’t retain any fire-protection engineers. Those engineers eventually want to return to the East Coast, the home of the country’s only fire-protection engineering programs: WPI and the University of Maryland.

As a result, WPI has been working with engineers and other universities in these regions, such as the Illinois Institute of Technology, to add WPI fire-protection programs to those schools’ curriculums. For more, visit www.wpi.edu .

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