Creating a Water and Wastewater Educational Program with Incorporated Experiential Training

The EPA requires in the Final Guidelines for the Certification and Recertification of the Operators of Community and Nontransient Noncommunity Public Water Systems Notice (1999) that states and US territories establish some sort of experiential or on-the-job training requirement for incumbent water or wastewater operators before they can legally become licensed professionals. In fact, some states require the operator to possess an adequate amount of experience in real-time plant operations, in order to take the certification exam. However, many times utilities discover that after the duration of training has passed, the would-be operator still does not hold the knowledge needed to pass the certification exam. This presents a well-defined problem when attempting to establish a succession plan for future employment needs, an issue currently plaguing the water industry. A resolution of this issue will involve a training program that seeks to model a mix of educational and experiential components which will produce professionals that have attained sufficient academic and operational expertise. This will require facilitators on each wavelength, academic and industrial, to cooperate in order to achieve the desired outcome. One such program that is currently pursuing such a venture is the Water Training Institute (WTI). Created by funds garnered from the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) division of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the WTI program has sought to address the developing workforce needs of the industry by providing pertinent academic training for aspiring operators, all while striving for partnerships with both industrial and regulatory agencies. The WTI Steering Committee, a group comprised of educational, industrial, and regulatory experts, epitomizes the necessary cooperation to develop a viable training program. A by-product of such cooperation is a grouping of individual utilities, known as UNet, which have agreed to provide the experiential cornerstone of the educational framework by providing internship avenues for student within the WTI program. This service ensures that graduates of WTI are provided the obligatory experience required for professional licensure. These utilities, in effect, become the instructors of this internship and are given the ability to grade the intern’s performance and to provide an adequate amount of real-life experience to the intern, so that successful simulation of day-to-day operation can occur. Present day evolution of the program has continued by adapting a curricula designed to meet the needs of those who cannot participate in traditional formats. This new format, a modular, selfpaced system dissects the original format, breaking the original semester-based format into smaller sub-sections. This grants a greater flexibility to those students that are currently working within the water industry, providing another avenue for a simultaneous educational/experiential curriculum. Interestingly, these internships have harbored not only experience for interns but have in some instances transitioned into fulltime positions with the utilities that have provided the internship. P ge 25354.2 This construct is a win-win scenario for both the utility and student, and would not be possible without sufficient cooperation between all three branches comprising WTI.