We are pleased to announce Dr. Dean Folkers has joined our staff as new Deputy Executive Director. For the first time in our history, the National Career Technical Education Foundation will have its own director, signifying recognition of our growth and development as an organization within the career technical education community. “We believe that our organization is at a turning point and the creation of this new position is central to the advancement of our new vision and the adoption of the Career Clusters as the standard model for all of CTE,” said Kimberly Green, National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEc)  Executive Director.

 Dr. Folkers joins NASDCTEc during a crucial time, as the organization leads a refreshed agenda for career technical education (CTE), which aims to be a rigorous academic system that also trains students for the jobs of tomorrow. To achieve its vision for CTE, NASDCTEc has adopted the National Career Clusters model as the official framework of all CTE programs. The comprehensive Career Clusters model provides students with a strong pipeline from high school to college and to career. Dr. Folkers will be charged with spearheading the National Career Clusters Initiative, a model intended to prepare all students for college and career.

Dr. Folkers comes to the organization with more than 20 years of CTE experience. Beginning as a high school agricultural education instructor and local FFA Advisor at Lakeview High School, Columbus, Nebraska, Dr. Folkers went on to serve in different leadership roles within the National FFA Organization. In his most recent position as the Assistant State Career and Technical Education Director for the Nebraska Department of Education, Dr. Folkers was involved with the creation and implementation of the Nebraska Career Education model that incorporated the States’ Career Clusters framework in supporting the development of college and career readiness among Nebraska’s students.  

We look forward to working with Dr. Folkers in his exciting new role. “I hope to capitalize on my previous experiences with career technical education to help me take NCTEF’s vision and the Career Clusters framework to the next level, by encouraging people to adopt and implement the framework,” Dr. Folkers said. Please join us in welcoming Dr. Folkers. He can be reached at dfolkers@careertech.org.

Tags: Career Clusters®

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 26th, 2010 at 5:50 am and is filed under Advance CTE Announcements, Career Clusters®. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.