2020 ATE Principal Investigators' Conference Banner

In the spirit of experimentation, the 2020 Virtual ATE Principal Investigators’ Conference is launching ATE Connects. The live session from 2:45 to 4 p.m. (EDT) on Tuesday, October 20, is an attempt to create opportunities for virtual networking and connection at the conference hosted by the American Association of Community Colleges with support from the National Science Foundation.

Through the ATE Connects platform everyone attending the conference remotely will be able to explore the work underway in the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program. To facilitate navigation, projects and centers will be grouped by STEM category (e.g., biotech, advanced manufacturing, etc.) and information, resources, and materials will be keyword-searchable.

Best of all, as individuals view a video or read grantees’ one-page handouts they will be able to join group chat channels by discipline using the Slack app within ATE Connects. People will be able to direct message ATE principal investigators (PIs) through the app, too.

 “The goal is to create connections and conversations around the materials,” Ellen Hause said during an ATE Central Office Hours webinar on September 30 where she fielded questions. As AACC program director for Academic and Student Affairs, Hause is leading the planning for the 27^th ATE PI Conference.

To help conference attendees maximize their engagement in the virtual meeting, AACC is offering the ATE Virtual Conference Orientation Webinar from 1 to 2 p.m. (EDT) on Wednesday, October 7. For more information about ATE Office Hours email info@atecentral.net.

Image of a person writing with a pen.

Strong communication and writing skills are an asset across STEM fields, for both those teaching and learning. And it’s important to note that the majority of employers actively search for candidates with solid communication skills, particularly a track record of strong written communication. With the fall semester underway, this blog post highlights resources that will assist ATE community members and their students in honing a variety of valuable skills related to these topics. Do you have additional resources focused on teaching or communicating that you’d like to share with the ATE community?  We’d love to hear from you – email us at info@atecentral.net!

Work on your writing skills (even remotely) with Purdue OWL.

Purdue’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) has always been a highly regarded resource for educators and students. The timely addition of their Remote Teaching Resource Portal offers those engaged in remote instruction a handy tool. The section highlights a variety of internal and external writing resources for all age levels, including the Conference on College Composition and Communication’s “Teaching Resources for Writing Instructors” guide, which is geared towards college educators. Many of the other resources are aimed at K-12 educators, though adaptable to higher education settings. For example, the “Professional, Technical Writing” page provides guidance on producing reports, memorandum, and scientific papers. Want even more content from OWL? Check out their YouTube Channel.

Brookdale Professor Michael Qaissaunee (center) with his networking students at NJ Governor's Cyber Security Challenge.

Brookdale Community College Engineering & Technology Professor Michael Qaissaunee brings a fine-tuned awareness of students’ needs and strong commitment to educational equity to his work as an Advanced Technological Education (ATE) principal investigator.

Qaissaunee received the 2020 HI-TEC Educator of the Year Award for his development of electronic textbooks for technician education and web-based interactive explainers that have lowered students’ costs and increased their understanding of complex science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) concepts.

 “These have really made a difference in my classroom and I’ve heard from teachers from across the country that … these animated learning snippets and interactive activities have really transformed their classrooms. It has really enabled us to reach a broader diversity of learners. They’ve provided a great teaching environment and enabled students to master content and skills that they’re studying,” John Sands said in his introduction of Qaissaunee at the 2020 HI-TEC Conference awards ceremony.  Sands is principal investigator of the National Support Center for Systems Security and Information Assurance and a subject matter expert on Qaissaunee’s E-MATE 2.0: Building Capacity for Interactive Teaching and Learning (Award # 1601612) ATE grant.

Many of the 50 E-MATE interactives on electronics, networking, and cybersecurity topics that Qaissaunee and Sands and his team have built are available at Brookdale’s STEM Institute; all of them will eventually be posted on CSSIA’s website. Other Brookdale College departments are the current hosts of E-MATE interactives that cover challenging concepts in chemistry, environmental science, and physics.

All the E-MATE interactives are free, and, because they use HTML5, do not require an internet connection nor Flash nor Java software. Educators and students can download and access them from flash drives, which, pre-COVID, Qaissaunee distributed at conference presentations and now sends to people who contact him at mqaissaunee@brookdalecc.edu.

Image of Donna Lange.

In this feature ATE Central continues our "I Am ATE" series, which showcases an ATE PI, staff member, industry partner, or other ATE stakeholder. We are excited to help spread the word about the wonderful people who are at the core of the ATE community and the innovative work everyone is doing.

Name: Donna Lange
Title: Associate Professor / PI & Center Director, DeafTEC: Technological Education Center for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students
Institution: Rochester Institute of Technology
Center Name: DeafTEC: Technological Education Center for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students
URL: https://deaftec.org

ATE Central: How did you become involved with ATE?

Lange: My first grant with ATE was in 2000 while I was chair of the Applied Computer Technology department at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID), a two-year technical college for deaf and hard-of-hearing students, and one of the nine colleges of the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY. At that time, we were looking for funding to support an information technology workforce development project. It was the NTID's grants coordinator who found the solicitation for the ATE program and encouraged us to submit a proposal. We are so grateful to have found ATE and have been part of the community ever since.
 
ATE Central: Tell us about the goals of your project or center.

Lange: In 2011, after eleven years of several successful ATE funded projects, we were awarded an ATE National Center of Excellence, DeafTEC: Technological Education Center for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students which is currently in its first year as a resource center.

The goal DeafTEC is to increase the number of deaf and hard-of-hearing (deaf/hh) individuals in highly skilled technician jobs in which there continues to be underrepresentation and underutilization of such individuals in the workplace.

To achieve this goal DeafTEC is providing resources to: (1) advance the career self-efficacy and career awareness of deaf/hh high school and college students related to STEM technician careers, (2) improve access to learning for deaf/hh high school and community college students in STEM classrooms, (3) improve access to learning for student veterans with hearing loss in STEM programs at community colleges, and (4) raise employers' awareness of deaf/hh individuals as an untapped pool of skilled technicians and how to hire, onboard, and create an inclusive work environment for these individuals. 

Rebecca Zarch’s research into the legacy of nine Advanced Technological Education centers has found that significant aspects of the centers’ work are continuing years after their National Science Foundation funding ended.

While looking for what has been sustained, Zarch is gaining insights into the leadership practices that led to successful operations and enduring impact.

“The biggest finding is nobody is doing this alone. The partnerships really make a difference and developing that network of partners—the broad-based support—is something that needs to be done intentionally and [to] start early,” Zarch said during a recent phone interview. She is principal investigator of the Epilogue Project (ATE Award #1821248) at the Sage Fox Group of Amherst, Massachusetts.  

The report scheduled for release in 2021 will focus on what has been sustained and will trace the processes that facilitated continuation of efforts. It will not be a comprehensive history or evaluation of the centers.  

“Sustainability here does not mean buildings and people. Sustainability is ideas,” explained Gerhard Salinger, who as co-principal investigator serves as project advisor. Salinger was a co-lead program director of the ATE program at the National Science Foundation from 1993 to 2012. He likens Zarch’s work to that of a historian who examines the intellectual output that flowed from a civilization rather than the physical structures that remain standing.

“We’re not about the bricks and mortar; we’re about the ideas....A lot of people in the program think that sustainability means that the people are still there after the money has left. And that doesn’t happen. It’s really the ideas. How did the world change because these people were there?” Salinger said.

Image of a person in business attire attending a conference call meeting on their laptop.

In response to social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, many professional conferences and large meetings are exploring a move to remote, asynchronous, and online convenings – including the HI-TEC Transformed 2020 conference taking place next week, on July 29-30. While many in the ATE community have experience collaborating and networking remotely, remote events can be stressful to organize and attend at the best of times. Here are some tips to aid in creating and participating in conferences and meetings during social distancing:

Organizing a Remote Conference or Meeting:

• Use an online program or agenda that can be easily updated. This makes it easy to add and alter sessions or segments as you negotiate the transition from a planned in-person event to an online event. The event program or agenda should be hosted on a public page or website for easy access.
• Build in time to test streaming and A/V procedures and have an alternative plan in mind. Conferences and meetings may bring together a large number of organizers, participants, and presenters with varying tech backgrounds. Before the day of the event, be sure to test all streaming technology and make sure you have a backup plan in case any elements of video conferencing or screen sharing go awry. Ideally include tech support as part of your team, ready to aid attendees or presenters if they have technical issues. 
• Designate moderators and provide them with instructions in advance. Just like an in-person event, remote conferences and meetings have a lot going on. Ensure that sessions do not run too long or become a negative experience for attendees and presenters by appointing a moderator to facilitate the event. Provide moderators with clear, well-communicated instructions in advance of the conference date.
• Explore options for asynchronous sessions. Some participants may not be able to present or attend live streams. Pre-recording some sessions and hosting video recordings on the conference or meeting site, and notifying attendees via email of their availability can offer a viable and useful alternative for presenters. You may also choose to record streamed events so that attendees can tune in asynchronously.
• Make all conference social media handles and hashtags widely known. Social media is an even more vital arena for networking when it comes to remote conferences. Be sure that conference attendees have social media handles and hashtags so participants and presenters can share and connect before and after sessions.
• Offer the most widely-accessible experience possible. This may include, for example, live-captioning presentations, or adding captions to asynchronous conference material. If distributing digital conference or meeting packets, make sure they follow W3C Accessibility Standards.

Hybrid bioscience courses developed with an ATE grant will be offered to all North Central State students this fall.

An Advanced Technological Education (ATE) grant helped to reconfigure biotechnician degree courses for online delivery and imbued two North Central State College educators with knowledge they used to help colleagues cope with the massive curriculum shift required by COVID-19.

In September 2018 Justin Tickhill and Jason Tucker began curriculum revisions funded by the Mansfield, Ohio, college’s first ATE grant from the National Science Foundation to convert six bioscience courses for online delivery of lectures and in-person labs for a specific audience:  employees of Charles River Laboratories who wanted to advance in their biotechnology careers.  

In March 2020 as COVID-19 forced colleges around the country to cease on-campus operations, Tickhill and Tucker became the go-to guys among their science and health sciences colleagues as they made the quick conversion from in-person to online instruction.    

This fall, the General Biology I course and five other hybrid courses that Tickhill and Tucker developed for the Bioscience Technician Expansion Project (Award #1800850) will be available to all North Central students. 

 “The ATE [program] has benefited our entire college with this one grant—more so than we could have ever imagined,” Tickhill said during a recent phone interview. He is associate professor of biology.

Image of a student writing in a notepad next to a laptop.

Equitable access to information and technology is a basic human right, and accessibility is a core tenant of ATE’s mission. This blog post highlights resources that will assist ATE community members in continuing to create materials that are accessible to all. Do you have some favorite STEM sites or online resources you’d like to share with the ATE community? We’d love to help – email us at info@atecentral.net!

Develop accessible lesson plans with the National Center on Accessible Educational Materials.

The National Center on Accessible Educational Materials (AEM Center) is a nonprofit initiative that provides resources and technical assistance for “educators, parents, students, publishers, conversion houses, accessible media producers, and others interested in learning more about AEM.” Here, instructors will find a wealth of well-organized information and resources for accessible education. The Supporting Learners section categorizes this information by age group, including higher education and workforce development resources, and contains a directory of AEM contacts for each state. Educators who create their own resources may want to explore the Creating AEM section, which includes information on the Best Practices for Educators & Instructors.

Even before graduating in May, Rick Heuer’s formula for success was featured in CVTC ads.

Rick Heuer has been welding, reading blueprints, and sketching designs for tools since he was a kid. After 30 years of self-employment in a physically taxing line of work he enrolled in 2018 at age 58 in Chippewa Valley Technical College (CVTC) in Eau Claire, WI, to learn how to leverage his mechanical ingenuity for a new career.

In his two years as a full time CVTC student, Heuer has been part of two teams that took first place awards (each with a $1,500 prize) in the American Technical Education Association 3-D Futures Competition.

“When I compare his first day when he joined the program and now, it’s amazing. He’s very fast, very efficient,” Mahmood Lahroodi, mechanical design instructor and coach of the two teams, said of Heuer. Heuer’s academic success and competition victories have made him a campus celebrity. He is featured in college marketing and was to speak at the spring graduation. Unfortunately, the in-person ceremony was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the 2017 ATE Annual Survey conducted by EvaluATE, supplemental questions submitted by the Working Partners Project inquired about industry/college partnerships within the ATE community. Data showed that 11 percent of respondents employed workplace-based learning models at their respective institutions. Other more common partnership models included the use of advisory boards (26 percent), curricular development and review (17 percent), program support (14 percent), and instructional support (13 percent).

For those programs that offered internships, apprenticeships, co-op learning, job shadowing, and other workplace-based learning opportunities, respondents reported a variety of benefits, including better preparedness of graduates as they transition into the workplace and more meaningful ties with industry partners. For this reason, this month’s From the Archive blog post calls attention to some of ATE Central’s archival materials surrounding workplace-based learning within ATE.