The United States Congress's Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) issued a report describing American corporations as "remarkably underdeveloped" when compared with the nation's leading international competitors. The OTA report indicated that training and retraining must be made available to the lower tier of poorly paid, unskilled and semi-skilled workers. One team of researchers has presented a model for establishing partnerships between businesses and educational institutions, in particular community colleges which the model views as uniquely suited to meet the needs of of such education/business partnerships. The goal of the partnership is to develop innovative programs to help improve the quality of education and training. One strategy to be utilized in making the partnership a concept viable is technology transfer. A special approach known as the Transformations Procedure was developed to facilitate technology transfer. The approach utilizes three phases of "hands-on" applied learning, resulting in job-related skills and a broad base of technical knowledge. The three phases are pre-tech, tech core, and tech specialty. The first two elements function as a common core of technical expertise to be mastered by all participants, while the last segment is tailored to meet the advanced technology needs of the individuals being served. The entire program consists of between 540 and 600 hours of classroom and laboratory instruction. The process is designed to rebuild the academic and technological foundation of shop-floor technical workers. The responsibility facing community colleges is to integrate Transformations as a bridge program within their own technology transfer strategies. (JMC)