 Mission Critical Operations, that's a term that has now been talked about quite a lot on the campus of Cleveland Community College, and it has to do with the $23 million grant that we receive from the Department of Labor. I have with me today Mitch Saipal and Jonathan Davis. They are the two co-project managers for this new grant project. And we're going to talk a little bit about what the grant is for and what it means to the college, and then we'll join a panel discussion we held recently with Dr. Jill Biden and the Secretary of Labor, Thomas Perez. That happened recently on our campus. So first, Mitch, let me ask you a little bit about what Mission Critical Operations is and how that relates to this grant and this funding that we're receiving. Okay. Briefly, Mission Critical Operations is any system or technology that a company relies on for their daily business that is central to their staying in business when that piece of technology goes down, then the company is basically shut down. They have to either turn customers away or send employees home. And so what we're doing is developing a curriculum towards being able to train technicians to maintain systems like that that are hybrid systems of electrical and mechanical and computer-based systems to keep those systems up 24-7. All right, Jonathan, so that's a real basic definition that the grant does involve more than just developing the curriculum. You want to talk about some of the other things, the certifications and equipment and why this is a unique kind of project? Yes, it is unique in the fact that we're not aware of any other curriculum across the country that exists, that's quite in a hybrid nature like this curriculum. In addition to the curriculum that we will develop, we'll also work with our industry partners to develop an industry-recognized certification both in information technology and in industrial systems in mission-critical operations so that we will have a credential that our students can earn that is verified by industry. So Mitch, one of the unique things about this project is, you know, 23 million sounds like a lot, and it is. And 13 million goes to Cleveland Community College, but there are other partners, so I think that brings a little unique aspect to it. You want to talk a little bit about the partnerships? Sure. Our partners are NASH Community College, WATE Tech Community College, both of those here in North Carolina, Moultrie Tech Community College in Georgia, and University of North Carolina at Charlotte is our university partner. And each of those schools gets a piece of that $10 million that's left in the grant, and each one brings a different area of expertise to the table. NASH is bringing emergency services and emergency preparedness and disaster recovery. WATE Tech is bringing big data analytics and virtualization, and UNC Charlotte is bringing an articulation program for students that, once they graduate here, they can move on to university studies. They are also bringing a cybersecurity part to this so we can work with industrial cybersecurity, which is a major component of the grant. And then Moultrie Tech is also bringing to us a remote telepresence system that they've developed, not only for work with other community colleges and with industry, but also for working in high schools so we can create a STEM pipeline. Okay, so this is really a regional grant and a regional project? Yes, absolutely. Okay, and I think that's one of the reasons why we received the grant, and one of the reasons why Dr. Biden and Secretary Perez came to visit with us. Before we go and see a little bit of our panel discussion, Jonathan, they did make two stops of tours on campus. The first one was in one of your classrooms, and you want to talk a little bit about what they were doing and why we chose that as one of the stops. Yes, our students were working on their Cisco Networking Academy labs where they connect routers and switches. And that day we were working on a what-if scenario. We were trying to connect a network in Shelby to a network in Charlotte. The students must configure the routers and the switches for end-to-end connectivity and then verify that connectivity to make sure that it works. So that's what we demonstrated in the lab to both Dr. Biden and Secretary Perez. Okay, and why did we want them to see that? What does that have to do with this new curriculum? Well, in the new curriculum, being a hybrid format, bringing the IT side of it into play, communications and connectivity is vital to a company, to vital to any company, especially mission-critical operations. You know, networking and connectivity is what it's all about. Okay, great. And then Mitch, we went to a lab where we do several programs, automation being one of them, and you demonstrated a telepresence type of scenario. So explain how that relates a little bit about that stop on the tour, I'll say, and how that relates to the project. Okay, one of the key features in this grant is a distance learning component to it. And the problem with a lot of distance learning for work like Jonathan, and I do this very technical and very hands-on, is the students, when they're at home trying to do their distance learning, they don't have access to some of the same equipment that a student on campus would have. So the telepresence session that we did was a remote control session basically where we took a laptop and we went online over the internet and then came in and controlled a piece of equipment in our lab. And students will be able to do that as part of this project from wherever they are, whether they're in Georgia, whether they're out east in North Carolina or whatever, they'll be able to reach into our labs and control the equipment. And we plan to roll that out at all five campuses. Okay, so how they relate to each other, you were connecting from Shelby to Charlotte, or the networking, well, maybe this was in the same room but it still was actually at a distance. So they are related, right? Yes. Essentially you're saying you had to have the internet. So even though there aren't exactly mission critical operations, both of those are going to be types of components in the program, correct? Yes. Right, they're pieces of the puzzle. Right, so now one of the things that people have been asking, they see this is supposed to be putting people back to work, Department of Labor grant, but we're really developing a curriculum in multiple pathways. So it'll be a while before there's anything really to see. Is that correct, Jonathan? It is. You know, we have the first year of this, really the first 18 months ish to develop the curriculum. And so we won't begin to see students enroll in this curriculum until at the end of about 15 to 18 months. I think we are planning a start in fall of next year, so fall of 2014. And of course we have to get this curriculum approved by our curriculum community. It has to go to the state, community college system. There's a lot to do between now and then to make sure that we're ready for fall. Okay, so something to be looking forward to and we'll be communicating that. Now we're going to go ahead and join our panel discussion that happened on November 18th here on the campus of Cleveland Community College.