Published: July 18, 2010

By Michelle Mann
Enterprise Ledger Staff Writer

A skill that will “change the world as we know it,” is what Enterprise State Junior College President Dr. Nancy Chandler called the college’s new Three-Dimensional Simulation and Modeling Technician Program on Friday morning.

Matthew Sasser sat with other classmates from the school’s first 3-D SMT class as Chandler showed a three-dimensional tour of the college campus developed by the group. “What you are seeing today is what our first class accomplished in 16 weeks,” she said. “You are seeing a demonstration of a skill that is going to change our world as we know it.”

The new course of study will enable graduates to enter the interactive 3-D virtual reality arena in four months. In what Dr. Jean Johnson called a “an ideal business-industry-college partnership,” the high-tech program was developed in cooperation with Enterprise-based Navigator Development Group Inc.

“This is a skill that will take you anywhere your dreams will take you,” Chandler told the capacity crowd in Forrester Hall Auditorium on the ESCC Campus on Friday. “It is the international language of visualization,” said retired Army Col. Al Patterson, Navigator Development Group co-founder and board chairman. “It has changed the definition of literacy.”

“A great opportunity” is what 18-year-old Sasser called the program. After dropping out of high school, he obtained his GED and then started attending ESCC. His intention was to major in music, said the Enterprise man who plays “guitar, drums, anything I can get my hands on.” The new 3-D program was not available when Sasser began his college career, but when he learned about the new 3-D program, he signed up. His mother, Barbie Lowman, and his grandmother, Helen Sasser, witnessed the first public presentation of the 3D tour of the ESCC’s Talmadge and Forester Halls.

Johnson, department head of the Fine Arts Department at the college, and Computer Information Systems department head Dr. Wanda Flowers worked with Navigator and its wholly owned subsidiary, NavTech LLC, to establish the curriculum. 

The college received a $50,000 grant from Gov. Bob Riley’s Workforce Development Office to create the Simulation Graphic Design and Animation course that teaches students what Johnson called “high-end simulation.” Graduates of the first class, which graduated in the spring, and the current class members were introduced by Chandler at Friday’s news conference.

NavTech developed and installed the Advanced Visualization Center in Fayetteville Technical Community College in North Carolina. On Friday morning, retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Paul Dordal, president of NavTech, said 3-D has become a $100 billion industry. “And the biggest part is content modelers,” he said. “Before graduating from the course, the person who is now our senior content manager was flipping hamburgers in a fast food place.”

“This new high-technology program is unique, its possibilities are endless,” Johnson said. “It puts students in jobs.”

A part of the three-dimensional tour of the college campus, made by the school’s first 3-D SMT class, included minor details such as chairs in classrooms.