Verlyn (Lyn) Velle
Career Technical Education Director
Campbell County Board of Cooperative Higher Education Services
Gillette, Wyoming
What influenced you to become an ACTE member, and how do you feel you benefit from this membership?
My undergraduate degree is from Colorado State University, where I was a Home Economics Education major. It was simply understood that, as a “vocational” student, one would be a member of the appropriate professional organization. Using such words as "home economics" and "vocational," obviously, the organization at that time was the American Vocational Association, and we were also expected to be members of the Colorado Vocational Association Student Division. Being an active member of AVA and now ACTE has been a focal point of my life, both as a teacher and as an administrator. Educational opportunities, the chance to meet and learn from experts in the field, networking with other educators, making a difference legislatively and loving the chance to belong to something that does so much good for students and others have been the most significant benefits of my membership.
What made you decide to work in the CTE industry?
Growing up on a ranch in Colorado, loving that kind of life and having a Mom who was a teacher, I knew that I wanted to teach, but actually wanted to major in agriculture education. However, at the time I was in high school, girls were not allowed to be members of FFA (haven’t we come a long way?) so my next best choice was home economics. It didn’t seem to matter what school I was in, I was always given the Perkins responsibility, so although teaching was always a joy, I knew that I wanted to be a CTE director and have now had my dream job for some 20 years. The involvement in CTE has led me to hold many offices in the Wyoming Association for Career and Technical Education and ACTE Region V, and on the ACTE Board of Directors as vice president from Region V. I was lucky enough to be voted Outstanding CTE Educator from Wyoming and from Region V, and was inducted into the ACTE Arch of Fame in 2006. We just returned from the ACTE Region V Conference in Alaska, where 11 of our Campbell County School District teachers, administrators, transition coordinators, counselors and even our Perkins grant administrator participated as committee chairs or members and/or officers of the Wyoming ACTE. Association membership and involvement has high priority for our CTE folks.
Tell us about your school and its CTE community.
In Campbell County School District, we have such an outstanding group of CTE teachers with programs that are very cutting-edge. Beyond the somewhat traditional CTE programs, we include ACME Animation partnerships with schools and professionals in California, Project Lead the Way, which helps to fill the need for engineers in our coal mining economy. We have just started an Energy Academy (small learning community) and will add two more academies next fall, one in transportation technology and one in hospitality and tourism, which will be held in a state-of-the-art culinary kitchen that was built for high school students in the new Gillette College Technology Center. We have very strong partnerships between the school district, the community college and the local business and industries. These teachers all have wonderful stories about student successes in college, in industry and in their own personal lives, and they are always so excited when one of their students comes back to visit and tells them the impact they have had on the student’s life.
What online and social networking resources do you use?
Online resources, such as Webcasts and podcasts, are great time-savers in the life of any CTE professional. We utilize them a lot and have many of our statewide meetings by WEN Video. Saves a lot of driving time in a state as large as Wyoming. This is a very large school district, so they have blocked a lot of resources that we might use, such as most of the social networks. We are working to convince them to let us use cell phones in the classrooms, to answer test questions, etc. But that may be a while in the future. In the meantime, most of us have Facebook, and blogging is really well suited for our mentorship students who are out in the work world as part of a class.