Molly Cooper, who teaches the tower installation program at Aiken Technical College, rose to the top of her profession, climbing cell and television towers, some taller than the tip top of the new One World Trade Center, step by step by step.
Now, she's giving her students a leg up as they learn to be trained, experienced climbers ready to work in the growing 4G wireless communication industry.
ATC's program is unique, combining hands-on, tower-climbing experience with academic and critical-thinking skills. The program produces entry-level authorized climbers through an intensive, 16-credit-hour certificate program. Students can apply those credits to a two-year associate of applied science degree.
"This particular program is the only one I know of like it in the United States. Our students are getting college credit, which is awesome," Cooper said. "Other programs are cropping up," she said, but "they're two-week programs, and there's no climbing. Students sit and listen to lectures.
"What we're trying to do essentially is to boil down the first six months of on-the-job training into critical thinking academic parameters."
After a couple of weeks of online assignments, students spend five weeks in the classroom, learning about the wireless industry, how towers work and other basics.
Then, Cooper teaches them to climb or finds out if they can climb.
"Everything is at height," she said. "I teach them fall protection; we get them on the tower, and they start climbing."
Students spend some time on an inside tower in the classroom. "I put them up there and make them hang out all day," Cooper said. "They have to eat lunch up there. They have to rig the tower."
Students also get real-world, hands-on experience on outdoor towers.
"The first time I climb with the students, I climb with them to 80 feet. That puts them above the tree line and gives them that exposure," Cooper said. "Also, that's where you have a breeze."
After learning about rigging principles and the wireless components that go on a tower, students end their training with tower inspection.
With the certificate they earn for completing the program, students can work in any market in the country in any specialty in the tower industry: working on cell phone antennas, building towers or taking them down, inspecting towers or becoming an assistant engineer for a television station.
"The best thing about coming out of this program is that our students are vetted," Cooper said. "The industry is used to getting people off the street, and they never know whether they will work out or not. Then they will have to put three or four weeks of effort into them just to find out if they like it.
"Our students can go to an employer, and they're more likely to get hired because they can say they've climbed to 150 feet and have physically rigged a tower. Basically, they're being pre-trained, educated and handed to the employers."
Cooper's next tower class begins May 11 and runs through June 26. For more information, visit www.atc.edu.
A native of Aiken, Larry Wood is a general assignment reporter.