Developing and Maintaining an Effective Program Advisory Committee

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Those who lead HVACR programs are required to conduct at least two program advisory meetings per year to satisfy accreditation requirements. In most cases, however, they don’t fully grasp the importance of these meetings, let alone how to recruit the right people to participate in them and how to conduct a successful meeting.

A well-run program advisory committee meeting provides the opportunity to convey your vision for the program, and how it will help your employer partners grow their businesses. The meeting allows you to clearly articulate the content of the program, competencies covered, the resources the program needs to accomplish its goals, and the skills that students will possess upon graduating from the program.

One of the most important elements of a program advisory meeting is the opportunity to hear from potential employers about the skills that they desire potential employees to have. Valuable input from those who will ultimately be the consumers of your product, your graduates, will help shape the program to meeting the needs of the industry.

Program advisory meetings help create new partnerships and strengthen existing ones, which can lead to equipment donations, guest presenter and field trip opportunities, quality employment prospects and overall improvements in student outcomes.

To help you develop ideas on how to recruit industry partners to attend, and what to do during these meetings, we offer a FREE elearning course on Program Advisory Committees on the HVACR Learning Network. 
Simply visit https://hvacr.elearn.network/, create a free account, and look under free courses for this and other free offerings.

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