1991-2003

1992 - Sixty-four of the state’s sixty-six largest processing and manufacturing companies require their current employees to update their job skills in this one but rather typical year. So confident are they of the state’s vocational system, that all sixty-four rely entirely on the ODVTE to prepare and present all of the instruction their employees must have.

1995 - As an extension of Oklahoma’s School-to-Work strategies, ninety of its high schools, nineteen of its area vo-tech schools, and twelve of its colleges cooperate in programs designed to integrate a student’s academic and vocational studies from the junior and senior years of high school through another two years of postsecondary preparation.

• The American Vocational Association names Roy Peters the nation’s outstanding vocational educator.

1999 - Roy Peters resigns as state director to accept a position with the Tulsa-based Oklahoma Alliance for Manufacturing Excellence. Over his tenure of thirteen years as director, total vocational enrollments have more than doubled to reach 481,821, and 29 vocational districts have made training easily accessible for 97 percent of the state’s population through their 54 sites. Dr. Ann Benson is immediately named interim state director and will succeed Peters in the permanent position.

• After a series of devastating tornados strike all over the state on the evening of May 3, the department responds with a swiftness equaled only by its creativity. Within weeks, the ODVTE prepares and presents through thirteen of its area schools a complete “Skills to Rebuild” curriculum, classes designed to equip people with the skills they will need to repair their own homes and businesses.2000

• By legislation signed by Governor Frank Keating on May 19, the Oklahoma Department of Vocational and Technical Education is renamed the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education. Its governing board is similarly renamed the State Board of Career and Technology Education. Not needing statutory permission, all area vo-tech schools already have substituted the term Technology Center in their names.

2001 - The United States Department of Education awards Oklahoma a $2.2 million federal grant to identify and coordinate what the nation’s twenty-first century students will need to learn in their schools if they are later to perform well on their jobs.

• The United States Department of Education identifies the telecommunications program offered at the Drumright campus of the Central Technology Center as an exemplary vocational program, one of only three in the nation that the department considers worthy of that high distinction.

• The Tinker Education Partnership Agreement, signed by Governor Frank Keating, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Sandy Garrett, CareerTech Director Ann Benson, Hans Brisch, Chancellor of the State Regents for Higher Education, Tinker’s Major General Charles Johnson II, and Robert Conner, executive director of Tinker’s Air Logistics Center, commits the CareerTech system to train and Tinker to hire at least 3,400 of the new employees that the base will need to replace those scheduled to retire by 2007.

2002 - With the support of a special $921,000 congressional appropriation, CareerTech’s Learning Network offers its first on-line vocational courses.

• Expansion Management, the country’s leading trade journal among economic development professionals, identifies Oklahoma’s CareerTech as one of the nation’s two most outstanding workforce training programs.

• Fulfilling the pledge she had made when accepting the position, Ann Benson announces her retirement in her fourth year as state director.

2003 - The CareerTech Skills Centers Division (CTSC) has evolved into what amounts to a state-wide school system, with “campuses” at eighteen public prisons, one private prison and four juvenile facilities. In recent years, nearly three-quarters of CTSC’s graduates go straight into training-related jobs, and enough others find work that close to 90 percent are working immediately upon their release. On the average, they draw wages approaching $10 per hour, and their first-year recidivism rate has been reduced to no more than 2 to 3 percent.

• On January 13, Pete Buswell, nationally respected for his management expertise in the field of worldwide learning services, succeeds Dr. Ann Benson as CareerTech’s state director. Buswell is only the fifth to hold that position in the system’s entire history.

• After a difficult five-month tenure, Buswell resigns on May 21. That same day Dr. Phil Berkenbile, a man with deep roots in the system, is appointed as interim state director.

• Governor Brad Henry made appointments to the new State Board of Career and Technology Education created by legislation approved this past spring.

Intro | 1862-1899  | 1900-1925 | 1926-1950 | 1951-1970 | 1971-1990 | 1991-2003

*Excepts from the recently published book by Danney Goble

For more information about purchasing the book, "A History of Career and Technology Education in Oklahoma," by Danney Goble click here

Download a classroom discussion guide here. (PDF file)