Effective August 3, 2009, the Trustees of the M.E.B.A. Medical and Benefits Plan and the M.E.B.A. Training Plan have arranged to have an in-house Travel Coordinator provide travel services to Participants attending the M.E.B.A. Diagnostic Centers and the Calhoon M.E.B.A. Engineering School. Participants must book all flights through the Plans' Travel Coordinator by calling them toll free. The toll free telephone number is (877) 324-6322. Normal operating hours for the Travel Coordinator are generally Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. until 7:00 p.m., Eastern Standard Time (6:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time).
Use of the in-house Travel Coordinator is mandatory for all airline arrangements for travel to the Diagnostic Centers and to the School. Failure to use the Plans' Travel Coordinator may result in the denial of your air travel expenses. The former travel agency should no longer be used.
American Welding Society Certification
CMES is proud to announce that we are now certified through the American Welding Society as a School Excelling through National Skills Standards Education (SENSE) and have agreed to act as a participating organization in the AWS SENSE Training and Testing Program. Further, there is agreement to abide by provisions of AWS QC10 Specification for Qualification and Certification Level I - Entry Welder and AWS EG2.0 Guide for the Training of Welding Personnel Level I - Entry Welder.
Electricity Refresher Course
CMES now offers a one-week core-level Electricity Refresher course with lectures and demonstrations designed to assist students with reviving previously learned knowledge in basic electrical and mathematical skills. This course should not be considered a replacement for our four-week Electricity course. Those students requiring basic electricity skills will need to take the Electricity course. Additional information on this course may be found in the Curriculum section of our web site.
Electrical Self-Assessment Test
Are you qualified to take Marine Electrical Propulsion, Electrical Troubleshooting, Industrial Electronics, or Programmable Logic Controllers courses. If you are not sure, a Self-Assessment Electrical test is now available on the school's web site. The upper level electrical and electronics courses offered at CMES now include only very brief reviews or no review at all of basic electrical concepts. Entrants for these courses are expected to possess a basic electrical knowledge. Please click here for additional information.
SS United States Memorabilia at CMES
Through the generosity of a local couple, Al & Paulette Lawing, the school now has memorabilia from the SS United States on display. Items include: the builders and designers plates, china, silverware, copper serving pans and bowls, log books, deck plans, the gangway sign, luggage tags and stickers, souvenirs for passengers, and many more. Their collection is on loan to us for one year and is on display, along with other SS United States memorabilia, in the Admin Building. Many thanks to Al and Paulette for thinking of CMES as a temporary home for their treasures!
The Lawings have graciously extended the loan of the Big U memorabilia until at least February 2010. Once again, we offer them our gratitude.
These photos are just a sampling of the SS United States memorabilia in this collection. See more photos here.
Online / Distance Learning at CMES
CMES is proud to announce the second USCG approved online course, Crisis Management and Human Behavior Online.
We previously announced USCG approval of our STCW Crowd Management Online course via the CMES Learning Management System (LMS), the first true Distance Learning System to be approved for training mariners. The LMS is a Virtual Learning Environment, which is a suite of functionalities that deliver, track, report on, and manage the learning content, trainee progress, and trainee interactions with the course and instructor. The LMS provides the instructor with the method to deliver course content, monitor student participation, and assess performance.
CMES's LMS embraces four important aspects of Distance Learning, which had to be addressed to satisfy the USCG: technical delivery standards conformance, privacy, uniform quality of training, and sustainability. The LMS also satisifies industrial and government standards for delivery methods and course content, transfer, and storage standards: SCORM 2004 (Shared Content Object Reference Model); AICC (Aviation Industry CBT Committee); MIS GLS (Industrial Management System Gloval Learning Consortium); and ARIADNE (Foundation for Knowledge Pool).
