Hi Fed, This on the surface sounds good but there are a few things that need to be addressed. First of all, those who are not full time technicians at a university and have to do work in homes, schools and churches do not have the luxury of being able to take all those days off just to try to prove to someone that they are qualified. I am also reminded of what I was told by some folks at Yamaha some years ago. When they started their list of people who where qualified to service their concert and artist pianos I was told that I was on their list even though I did not take their three day training that these people were supposed to take. I asked why and was told that some of the people at Yamaha knew me and that I was qualified. then they took my name off. Then I was put back on again. Later I was taken off again since I did not take their three day course. I was later told by one of the Yamaha people that they were having problems due to the fact that they had people come who were not qualified but they passed the three day course and when they did not use what they learned in those three days for a while, they did not do the job that they were supposed to do due to lack of keeping up these skills. I think that this plan is going to run into the same thing. The third thing that I am thinking is, are we trying to make too big of a deal with this? How many universities are going to look at this and care. Fourth, would it be worth my while to loose $4,800 in work as well as the expense of the hotel room? I do not think so. God bless Bill Balmer, RPT University of Findlay and Ohio Northern University In a message dated 06/17/09 19:59:24 US Eastern Standard Time, fssturm at unm.edu writes: As long as Ben has introduced the subject, perhaps a slightly more salient description is in order. As those of you who are politically involved in PTG are aware, there is a proposal before council this year to establish a credential for cauts, under the name of College and University Technicians Endorsement (CAUT-E). This is the result of many years of discussion, and various efforts to put ideas into practical form. It is different in form from anything I remember being discussed in this forum, though maybe that is just my bad memory. In any case, the proposal is based on a series of four intensive training sessions, each to be three days in length, under the name "CAUT Academy." They will cover, under a prescribed curriculum, topics to do with administration, management, planning and the like; concert level tuning and preparation; historical instruments and related topics; and a miscellaneous category that will include techniques for maintaining high use instruments at a high standard. Each of these sessions will have an exit exam related to it. Passing the four exams will constitute receiving the endorsement. The fact the there is a practical proposal before council is pretty remarkable. Kudos to Dale Probst and many others for pushing to make this real, rather than just a lot of continuing talk. As to what council will make of it, that remains to be seen. But we hope that most of you will take a positive view of this, as a step in the right direction. Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico fssturm at unm.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20090619/5e1d2c39/attachment.htm>
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