Cumberland County engineering students guaranteed seat at Rowan through agreement

Officials from Cumberland County Technical Education Center and Rowan University signed the agreement Wednesday in Vineland.

VINELAND -- Incoming engineer students at Cumberland County Technical Education Center are already getting a head start on their future -- with a new agreement between the school and Rowan University.

Officials from CCTEC and Rowan University's College of Engineering signed the transfer agreement Wednesday at the tech school's new 200,000-square-foot facility. The facility has classroom space made specifically to teach engineering, with help from Rowan in designing the classrooms and curriculum.

"We want to make sure that any student in southern New Jersey that wants an engineering degree and has the capacity to pursue it -- we want to have a seat for you," said Dr. Anthony Lowman, dean of the Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering. "Signing agreements like this are really important to us."

This is the first year that CCTEC is offering engineering courses but it is already one of the school's flagship programs. Out of the incoming 241 students for the Class of 2020, 40 of those students signed up for engineering.

"All of our freshman engineering students are now eligible with this signing to go straight from our doors to the rowan college of engineering -- upon successful graduation from CCTEC," said Dr. Dina Rossi Elliott, superintendent of the tech school.

Students in the engineering program will receive college credit for some of their coursework. If they complete all four years of the program and achieve a 3.5 GPA, they will be eligible to go to Rowan. There is also another track for engineering students to go through Cumberland County College before getting to Rowan.

Cassius Garcia, 14, of Vineland, took a tour of Rowan's engineering building before and it helped convince him to go for engineering at CCTEC. Rowan's partnership with the tech school just makes his decision to attend that much easier.

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"It makes me feel good because that's what I was thinking before I was even accepted into the school -- that I wanted to go into the program," Cassius said. "Now that they are partnering up and I can go right into it its even better."

For Martin Adame, 14, of Bridgeton, doing the engineering program will help him decide if it's what he wants to do for a living.

"You've got to just go into it first ad see how you like it, what you want to do, just get a good feel for it and see what you want to do with your life and after high school is done," Martin said. "I thought engineering would be a good choice."

Rowan University has similar signing agreements and partnerships with Gloucester County Institute of Technology and Glassboro High School, however, this is the first times making this specific agreement with another school and its first time going into Cumberland County.

"We're reaching out to a whole set of students that we might not have been able to reach before or may not have been able to come to Rowan engineering in the past," Lowman said.