![Christina Lee, a Pasadena City College student, completed biotechnology tasks at Oak Crest Institute of Science.](local/data/caches/images/scaled/img_00027593_300x300.jpg)
Jared Ashcroft was so excited about the Community College Undergraduate Research Experience (URE) Summit that he attended in November, that he has set up a Zoom meeting on January 8 to continue the conversations about expanding research opportunities for community college students.
The Zoom meeting 6373293038 (https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/6373293038) begins at 12 p.m. Pacific Standard Time (3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time) on Wednesday, January 8.
It is open to anyone interested in the topic. Ashcroft says that whether three or 100 people attend, he hopes the meeting will lead to other conversations and, perhaps eventually, other in-person meetings.
“To me it’s more of a national conversation—like how do we support each other at community colleges? How can we maybe leverage different [undergraduate research] programs that are really successful?”
Ashcroft was one of a dozen educators affiliated with Advanced Technological Education projects and centers who participated in the URE Summit on November 20-22, 2019, in Washington, D.C. He is a chemistry professor at Pasadena City College where he and Veronica Jaramillo, an instructor of natural sciences, mentor the Early Career Undergraduate Research Experience (eCURE) program.
The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) convened the summit of 130 thought leaders—community college and university educators, students and graduates, as well as representatives of government agencies and non-profit organizations—to examine the role of community colleges in building, implementing, and sustaining undergraduate research experiences in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and workforce preparation. The summit was organized with support from the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education (NSF ATE) program.