The goal of CTE's curriculum design, with early and ongoing participation from industry, is to combine knowledge of the most current tools and technologies with an understanding of the fundamental principles that underlie them. This ensures that graduates have immediately useful skills, in addition to the deeper understanding that will allow them to move smoothly and efficiently to new systems and approaches. The CTE program addresses the hundreds of thousands of software development jobs currently vacant across the United States. In addition to the preparation of highly qualified job entrants, it helps employers by providing consistent, high-quality means of certification of skills. Accordingly, the CTE program not only incorporates the detailed skills and knowledge needed to work in the present-day software environment, but also stresses fundamental concepts that persist across rapid technology changes.
All courses involve extensive hands-on assignments.
A distinguishing feature of the curriculum is that its courses form a tightly integrated whole. Success in each course depends on mastery of the material in the prerequisite courses. Furthermore, all of the courses are embedded in a context of useful system development. Students are continually reminded that software is built to meet requirements, and that it must be functional, usable, robust and maintainable. Use the navigation links on the left to discover more about CCAC's offering of the CTE courses.