![While leading a tour of Irvine Valley College's labs on February 10, Microbiology Professor Emalee Mackenzie tells c3bc Project Director Russ H. Read about her plans to add medical device manufacturing courses to the biotech offerings in Orange County, California.](local/data/caches/images/scaled/img_00022688_300x300.jpg)
As Microbiology Professor Emalee Mackenzie took in the scene of 36 medical device industry representatives and bioscience academicians in Irvine Valley College's conference space, she could not help smiling. She was happy that the professional connections she made through MentorLinks led to her hosting the Fifth Medical Device Skill Standards Meeting on February 10.
"It's all those connections, and meeting them at ATE ... that have been tremendous. Vivian opened doors and made all this possible," Mackenzie said, referring to the introductions Vivian Ngan-Winward, her MentorLinks mentor, provided at the 2015 ATE Principal Investigators Conference.
MentorLinks is a technician education program improvement initiative that the American Association of Community College offers with support from the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education program. MentorLinks pairs a college team that is working on a new or revamped STEM program with a community college educator who has expertise in the target discipline for a two-year period.