Expensive school with an a decent program. Full time day students when I was there were looking at 32K a year. It's a 4 year program with only 5 ATC classes, though I heard there's a 6th now. One thing I will say in their favor is that all of the classes include lots of sim time. They have a good TRACON set up for the Manchester NH area and there's a tower sim too.

I don't know how their future looks though. They were just bought by ITT Tech. For those of you who aren't familiar with them they are a FOR PROFIT education corporation. They are not accredited and will give a diploma to anyone who pays them. The plan is to keep ITT Tech schools and DWC separate, but who knows.

Either way, it's a decent program, but I don't think it's worth it for the money.

Don't waste your money and time at this place. It's a joke. It's very expensive also. Forget about it.

I graduated DWC before it was bought out by ITT but as far as I know they still have the same ATC professors. The ATC program focusses mainly on terminal and uses voice recognition software. There is a lot of sim time, and all ATC students have access to use the sims on their own time also. The school itself is small and does have it's problems, but the ATC program is great.

I am a current Senior in the ATC program at DWC. I also work for the school, in both the flight center, and the IT department. The school, like most, have its advantages and disadvantages, both of which I will get into in a moment. The college is small, with a total of 1200 students, with only (roughly) 600 day students.

The college was recently bought out by ITT ESI (the owners of ITT Tech). This has allowed the college to start major renovations, including new dorms, remodeling the older buildings, and new technology. This has however taken away some of the aspects of a private college I enjoyed, but will allow the college to grow.

I started at the college in the flight program, I finished the private pilot course, and discovered that the pilot life was not for me. At this point I switched majors to ATC and have loved it ever sense.

The ATC department used to be much smaller, with only 2 professors. That was before I started attending the college. There are now 3 full time professors, with 1 adjunct, and 5 additional lab instructors. The full time instructors all have significant experience, such as Denver, Boston Center, and a career military controller. The 5 lab instructors include a retired Boston Tracon controller, a current BCT, a ZBW controller, and a KBOS. All of these instructors have valuable incite into different techniques.

The ATC department has added a new course, before their was 5. The first course is an introduction to ATC, including history and technology. The next course is a tower course (the newest course), which covers basic tower operations. This course uses Academy Tower. The rest of the courses after that center on Terminal, using a custom map (loosely based off of KMHT). The last set of courses (senior year) focus on crew resource management, renamed to Sector Resource Mgmt. With each of the professors experience and knowledge the classes get rather interesting and difficult.

The school does have its disadvantages, it is expensive for instance, and it is located in a small city. Students often complain that there is nothing to do, while Boston is only a 45 minute drive away. Another disadvantages students often complain about is PRICE. DWC is an aviation college, its expensive, get over it. DWC gives its students (on average) a good chunk of change in aid. The tuition is only outrageous if your a flight student (flight costs). The campus is small, with 4 dorms, and about a dozen townhouses. There are 2 academic buildings, a flight center, and the hangar (where all the ATC faculty, and ATC Labs are housed).

So, in short, I have enjoyed the time at DWC. All of the faculty have real world experience, and most are always available to talk. The college has areas it could definitely approve on, but its ATC program is great.

As mentioned in a couple of the posts, DWC has been bought out by ITT Tech. They came in and made lots of promises of a brighter future. They lied. The first thing they did was fire the president and many other members of the staff and faculty. The newest change is that they are shutting down the school's flight program. The flight program was the back bone of this school. If they cut that nothing is safe. DWC is now well on it's way to becoming yet another For Profit Degreee Mill. Any program that isn't cost effective isn't safe.

I am currently in the ATC program at DWC. First of all, I would like to point out that the Air Traffic program has not been negatively affected by the ITT buyout or the closure of the flight program. In fact, the school has just finished installing a brand new TRACON Simulator.

The price is a little cheaper than many 4 year programs now as the school has just restructured it's tuition plan. The tuition is billed at about $400 per credit hour. Most classes are 3 credits, the ATC classes are 4 (due to the lab time). Most students will take between 16 and 18 credits per semester totaling about $14,000 per year in tuition. The catch is that the school no longer gives merit-based grants or scholarships.

The program itself is great. The professors are all very knowledgeable and have great senses of humor. There are six air traffic classes as well as classes in meteorology, airport management, and several business classes. The first air traffic course is a general overview of ATC, the FAA, and the NAS (national airspace system). The second course, which can be taken at the same time as the first, is a basic VFR Tower course in the schools ADACEL Tower Simulator. Students learn the basics of Local, Ground, and Clearance control positions in simulated day and night conditions at Academy tower; the same airport used in OKC. This is helpful because we will already be familiar with the airport and airspace when we arrive at Oak City.

The third and fourth air traffic courses are very detailed and in depth and cover IFR and VFR operations in a terminal radar (TRACON) environment. These are probably the two hardest courses in the program but if you approach them knowing that they involve a lot of work, particularly memorization, not unlike the real job, then you should do fine. As I mentioned, there is now a brand new UFA TRACON Simulator. Unlike the tower simulator, the TRACON sim has voice recognition software, so no pseudo pilots are required. The fifth air traffic course is a summary of the third and fourth but mostly focuses on team building and students are designated supervisors for each lab session. The sup chooses who runs on what position for each scenario.

The final air traffic course has just been reworked and now simulates working at an up/down facility (a combined tower and TRACON). A sup is appointed to work both facilities and the TRACON and tower are run simultaneously. Unfortunately the simulators cannot be linked so they do not share traffic, but it's still really interesting. Each air traffic course, except the introductory course, involves a 3 hour lab each week and it is recommended to spend at least another 3 hours each week practicing in lab outside of class.

Overall, I think the air traffic program and instructors here at DWC are great. That's why I didn't transfer to Embry-Riddle when ITT bought the school. There are no classes specifically targeted to the En Route environment but no one around here is complaining about that. The professors are very knowledgeable and all have experience in the FAA and/or military ATC. I am not sorry that I have remained at DWC in the Air Traffic program since the ITT buyout and I think it is the best program in the North East and is still one of the best in the whole country.