TCC’S WEB DEVELOPMENT TOOLS CLASS EARNS AWARD FOR CREATIVITY
Latest challenge: A site for the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s 2004 Race For The Cure

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – (Oct. 17, 2003) – Tidewater Community College’s Web Development Tools course practices what it teaches, and wins kudos for its success. The class, recognized this summer by the Virginia Council For Career and Technical Education through its Creating Excellence Award, puts students in the world of business, designing sites for local companies and not-for-profit groups.

The Creating Excellence Award was presented in Roanoke to select community colleges for various initiatives. This award was one of two TCC received. The other award was presented to TCC’s Automotive Advisory Council.

Taught by Debbie Benham at TCC’s Virginia Beach campus, the Web Development Tools class is considered a capstone or advanced-level course in the Information Systems Technology degree curriculum. The course incorporates the skills and tools used in other web-development classes such as Photoshop, Java Script, Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks.

“Each semester is different, with the variety of businesses the students design sites for,” says Benham, who was recognized in August by the Virginia Council for Career and Technical Education. “The companies welcome the opportunity to have our students develop their sites.” The web-page design process concludes with each student team making a formal presentation to classmates and the company. Generally, they develop three different sites for each business so the owners can select their favorite.

Currently, students are working on a site for the Susan G. Komen Foundation for the 2004 Race For The Cure. The Web site designs will be presented at the end of the semester and the site should go live in January to promote the race to benefit breast-cancer awareness and research. Joan Casteel, TCC faculty lead for the Oracle Database Administrator and Oracle Developer programs, will incorporate database work during the spring semester in the Database Driven Web Sites course to also support the foundation. Race organizers have estimated a monetary value on the work being done on their behalf and have listed TCC as an official sponsor.

Tidewater Community College is the second largest of the 23 community colleges in the Commonwealth of Virginia, enrolling more than 34,000 students annually. It is the 37th largest in the nation’s 1,600 community college network and among the 50 fastest growing large community colleges. Founded in 1968 as a part of the Virginia Community College System, the college serves the South Hampton Roads region with campuses in Chesapeake, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Virginia Beach, a regional Visual Arts Center in Olde Towne, Portsmouth, the TCC Jeanne and George Roper Performing Arts Center in the theater district in downtown Norfolk, and a regional Advanced Technology Center in Virginia Beach. Forty-three percent of the region’s residents attending a college or university in Virginia last fall were enrolled at TCC.

Media Contact: Laurie White, Chief Communications Officer
757-822-1085, LWhite@tcc.edu
Roberta Cool, Dean, IT and Business Division 757-822-7373