Curriculum Development Division of Rand Worldwide® Reaches Milestone Anniversary

ASCENT- Center for Technical Knowledge® Celebrates 10 Years of Developing Curriculum.

Rand Worldwide, a global provider of technology solutions to organizations with engineering design and information technology requirements, announced that its courseware division, ASCENT- Center for Technical Knowledge, has celebrated its 10th anniversary.

While Rand Worldwide has been in business for over 25 years providing CAD software, training, and courseware, it was ten years ago that Rand Worldwide created a courseware division by acquiring Republic Research Training Center’s (RRTC) Autodesk courseware business and combining it with its existing Pro/ENGINEER and CATIA courseware products, creating a new division named ASCENT- Center for Technical Knowledge.

When the ASCENT division was launched in 2001, it released courseware for PTC’s Pro/ENGINEER 2000i2 and Dassault Systèmes’ CATIA V5R9. Over the years, ASCENT has published training materials for the latest versions of the software including Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 (newly branded under the Creo umbrella), Windchill PDMLink, CATIA V5, and ENOVIA V6. As ASCENT has expanded over the years, it has grown to include a multi-disciplinary staff comprised of engineers, instructional designers, technical writers, and subject matter experts. In the last decade, ASCENT has released over 120 titles for Pro/ENGINEER courseware, and over 130 titles for CATIA V5 courseware, in addition to serving the Autodesk community with training manuals for its latest software releases.

“Rand Worldwide formed the ASCENT division 10 years ago when we recognized the need to develop a curriculum development division that focused solely on providing high-quality, unbiased training materials, and that was not distracted by selling software or services,” remarked Chris Grossman, Vice President, Engineering, Rand Worldwide. “Today, customers choose Rand Worldwide as their training provider because of the quality, up-to-date training materials that are developed by ASCENT, as well as our excellence in delivering training tailored to our customers’ needs.”

In addition to the standard curriculum, ASCENT provides customized curriculum to Rand Worldwide’s customers. One of these customers, John Deere, has chosen Rand Worldwide as a Partner-level supplier in its Achieving Excellence Program for nine consecutive years because of the outstanding training classes provided by Rand Worldwide, and the customized Pro/ENGINEER training curriculum provided by ASCENT.