Ten students from two Georgia technical colleges spent two weeks in Ireland this summer through a new exchange partnership announced earlier this year.
Seven students from North Georgia Technical College (NGTC) and three from Chattahoochee Technical College visited the Waterford Institute of Technology, which signed a partnership in July with the Technical College System of Georgia, the system announced in its fourth-quarter international update.
William Donnelly, president of Waterford, visited the state to join TCSG Commissioner Gretchen Corbin in the July signing, which called for giving students hands-on international experience while building expertise that would bolster each region’s respective economy.
The full rationale goes as follows:
WIT and TCSG desire to maximize the educational and training programs now offered by WIT and TCSG colleges to provide the benefits of cross-border education and training resulting in excellent academic achievement and access to world-class technical vocational education and training for Georgia and Irish students as well as to maximize the career prospects and opportunities especially in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields and other vocational fields of study or training.
Waterford is a university-level institutions ith more than 10,000 students in the southeast of Ireland. The Technical College System of Georgia encompasses 22 colleges on 85 campuses with more than 133,000 students enrolled.
Aside from those that sent students during the summer, the institutions working with Waterford on the agreement include Athens Tech, Columbus Tech, Georgia Northwestern and Gwinnett Tech.
TCSG also took home the Georgia International Award for education this year for its work on German-style apprenticeships under the GA-CATT program.
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