Northland Community and Technical College had the nation’s first accredited UAS Maintenance program. With NSF ATE support it has offered faculty professional development, created a UAS Maintenance certificate program, and a UAS Field Service Technician program.

The National Center for Autonomous Technologies (NCAT)—recently funded with a grant (#1902574) from the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education (NSF ATE) program—will prepare technicians for careers working on unmanned vehicles that operate on land, sea, or air. The new center’s multi-disciplinary approach will encompass the array of emerging technologies utilized by autonomous vehicles from their composite-material structures to their geospatial-informed navigation systems.

To accomplish his ambitious goals for the new center Principal Investigator Jonathan Beck has partnered with multiple ATE center and project leaders. One of the center’s co-principal investigators is Jill Zande, associate director, co-principal investigator and competition coordinator for the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center.

The center’s staff at Northland Community and Technical College in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, will also leverage industry activity in the Red River Valley and the assets at Northland’s aerospace site, the Minnesota State Transportation Center for Excellence, St. Cloud State University, and the University of North Dakota. The university operates the Northern Plains UAS Test Site, one of six Federal Aviation Administration test sites for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) that are also known as drones.

These cross-discipline and cross-state-boundary collaborations add another dimension to the center’s goal of preparing technicians to work with the convergence of technologies that are integral to airborne drones, remotely operated underwater vehicles, and autonomous automobiles.

“What we are doing is training students to be adaptive and nimble, to think outside the box as they look at changing skill sets that will be required over the course of their careers in autonomous technologies. There’s a lot of jobs that are increasing the skills sets that are required … big changes to the skills sets that’ll be required, but modifications to a lot of the existing job titles,” Beck said.

A special thanks to our practicum student, Xiuyuan He, for contributing to this month’s From the Archive blog post. Xiuyuan is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison iSchool.

In this month’s From the Archive blog post, we highlight resources on the theory and practice of online education, which may be useful to educators and administrators who are interested in online course development and design. Our first resource offers an overview of selected learning theories, principles of deeper learning, and successful instructional strategies. The second is a collection of presentations from a 2016 committee meeting on online education; this meeting centered on a report published by the Online Education Policy Initiative at MIT. Our last resource is from the Articulated Technological Education Pathways project. It provides an introduction to and tutorial on Moodle, a free, open-source learning management system.

ATE-facilitated partnerships between faculty at the five Pacific Island colleges, employers, and researchers provide career opportunities for students such as the one-week QUEST course that trained American Samoa Community College students for marine resource management.

World-renowned coral reef scientist Robert H. Richmond says the outcomes from his four ATE project grants, which build the capacity of STEM educators and capabilities of students at five Pacific Island community colleges, are among the most gratifying accomplishments of his career.

“Honestly when I look back and I can see the things that I consider to be the greatest contributions I would have to say NSF ATE programs in the end are probably the most valuable things I’ve ever done. Not all my research colleagues would agree, and I would like to think my research—my research publications—are having an impact. But in the end, when I look at the numbers: I look at the islands. I look at where they start[ed], and where they are today. In reality the bang for the buck has been pretty amazing in terms of where they are,” Richmond said during a phone interview from Hawaii where he the director of the Kewalo Marine Laboratory at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

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Many within the ATE Community are knowledgeable about the importance of creating accessible classroom documents, but even the most experienced among us can benefit from a few practical tips. Those in search of guidance on developing Universal Design for Learning (UDL)-aligned materials may benefit from the resources assembled by the NSF-funded AccessATE project and the National AEM Center at CAST, an AccessATE project partner.

After operating “bad guy” drones during a training exercise at the New York State Emergency Preparedness Center, Mohawk Valley Community College students and faculty met with law enforcement officers in fall 2018. Student Annie Born, in red coat in left photo, repairs a small, flight-trainer drone in the right photo.

“There’s a lot of cool stuff going on,” is Tim Thomas’s apt summary of the numerous ways that Mohawk Valley Community College’s (MVCC) overlapping ATE grants address the workforce needs emerging with advances in unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), which are also known as drones.

For the college’s $557,487 ATE grant (#1800296) to develop five micro-credentials, Thomas, associate dean for Physical Sciences, Engineering, & Applied Technologies, and Bill Judycki, professor of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS), followed industry advisors’ guidance to certify short sequences of courses in cybersecurity, GIS, and data analysis, and to strengthen its AAS degree curriculum.

“Micro-credentials are the sweet spot of up-skilling the incumbent workforce,” Thomas said. They’re also a promising vehicle for bringing high school students into the degree program that prepares technicians to pilot, manufacture, program, and repair RPAS as well as analyze the multitude of data the unmanned aircraft gather during flights. A $300,000 Empire State Development Grant the college received in 2015 laid the groundwork for the RPAS degree.

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ATE Central is pleased to announce a new feature in both the ATE Impacts blog and the ATE Central Connection (our monthly newsletter) called "I Am ATE," 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: Tynisha S. Ferguson, MA
Title: Communication & Technology Specialist    
Institution: Florence-Darlington Technical College
Center name: SCATE Center/Mentor-Connect
URL: https://www.scate.org and http://www.mentor-connect.org

ATE Central: How did you become involved with ATE?

Ferguson: After I completed my service as an AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), I realized I wanted to continue a career in public service. I wanted to work within the grant world and work within a program that would give me national exposure to various industries, initiatives, and projects. I am also extremely good at utilizing technology and had previous experience covering STEM-related topics, and from the time I was in high school have loved all things communications. Because of my background and interests, I felt inclined to apply for the Communication & Technology Specialist position at the South Carolina Advanced Technological Education (SCATE) Center of Excellence. Prior to this, I had no knowledge of the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program or the National Science Foundation (NSF), but after only a few months, I was really impressed by how much the ATE program has essentially impacted almost every industry with its research projects.

Florida Keys Community College student Cody Moore uses a 3-D printer as he helps with prototype development at Hydrokinetic Energy Corp. The paid internship at the company in spring 2019 is the capstone experience of his Engineering Technology-Renewable Energy Technician degree.

When Patrick H. Rice looks out his office window at the pristine waters of the Florida Keys, lapping at the edge of Florida Keys Community College and surrounding the island campus, he sees more than a fabulous view: he envisions an open-air, controlled lab for students to conduct authentic research on renewable energy.  

“We are surrounded by hydrokinetic power. We’ve got plenty of wind—sometimes way more than we want—and we’re the sunshine state. So it just makes sense to have a renewable energy program down here. The whole goal is to build the program, and, at the same time, have students help us build the program and build those industries,” Rice says. He is the college’s Chief Science & Research Officer and principal investigator of its Advanced Technological Education (ATE) grant (Award # 1601440).

Three of the 11 students in the Engineering Technology-Renewable Energy Technician program, which Rice started with ATE grant support, are in the process of completing capstone internship experiences.

Industry partnerships play a vital role in the way that many ATE projects and centers plan for, design, and implement their various programs, projects, research, and more. Industry partners might act in an advisory role; assist with curriculum or professional development; offer student opportunities for growth and innovation; support instruction, program costs, or research; or offer workplace-based learning opportunities. In this month’s From the Archive blog post, we look at resources, created by ATE project and centers like yours, that help describe a variety of industry partnerships models and explore how one might develop or sustain such a partnership.

The BigBadTech YouTube channel logo pops up whenever Jim Pytel mentions a previous lecture during a video. “It helps remind students the channel serves as a path through the forest. If they ever wander too far off the path the previous lectures will hopefully get them back on track,” he explained.

As the team at ATE Central ramps up to create the ATE Impacts 2020-2021 publication, it is asking the ATE community for nominations of projects with promising outcomes or interesting activities to spotlight.

Nominate your project or someone else’s at https://www.research.net/r/ProjNom.

The book is a great opportunity to increase awareness of the innovations developed by principal investigators of Advanced Technological Education (ATE) projects and centers and to promote technician education in general.

In addition to informing people who read the book, the dynamic photos and compelling data that projects and centers have provided for previous editions have often been re-purposed for other technician-education outreach.

The American Association of Community Colleges, a partner on the ATE Collaborative Outreach and Engagement (ACOE) project that includes the ATE Impacts book and blog, has used ATE Impact photos in its digital and print publications, website, and ATE Principal Investigators’ Conference displays. The ACOE project has displayed large versions of ATE Impact photos at education and industry conventions. The National Science Foundation, which funds the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program and the ATE Impacts book and blog, has reprinted ATE Impact photos too.

Jim Pytel, principal investigator of the Flipped Classroom Resources for Electrical Engineering Technicians project, reports that being one of the 28 projects featured in ATE Impacts 2018-2019: 25 Year of Advancing Technological Education may have contributed to more people accessing his BigBadTech videos. From October 2018 to March 2019 the project’s YouTube channel with 600 instructional videos gained 5,000 subscribers for a total of 27,600 people.

“I’ve got no direct evidence tying the increase in interest to the ATE Impact book, however, both the book and the ATE Principal Investigators’ Conference are a great way of disseminating this work among my peers,” Pytel wrote in an email.

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This recent article by the Community College Journal reveals that employers are always interested in new graduates’ technical skills but, according to a survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), new graduates’ problem solving skills, abilities to work in a team, and communication skills are among the top attributes employers are looking for.

John Kinney, head of claims at The Hartford Insurance, said that one of the most dramatic shifts over the last ten years has been the rise in customer expectations. “Not only must our claims employees satisfy the technical aspects of the job, but they also have to serve as the face of our company in people’s time of need,” Kinney says. “How do we provide a level of service to our customers that will encourage them to promote our brand to their friends and family? You need somebody who is really good at building rapport.”