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Community College Week and the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD) have announced the winners of the annual Scott Wright Student Essay Contest, and winners were recently honored at the NISOD annual conference in Austin, Texas.

The award is named for a former editor at Community College Week, Scott Wright, who is a highly regarded and award-winning journalist. Students who entered the contest were asked to write about a faculty member, staff member, or administrator who made an impact on their education.

The three winning students and the three employees featured in the essays each received an award of $1,000, plus recognition at the NISOD conference. Additionally, each student’s college received a complimentary 2018-2019 NISOD membership.

To read more about the winners and to see the winning essays, read the full the story on Community College Week’s website.

Visit NISOD's announcement of the essay winners. 

Photo from NISOD.com. Featured are Teela Foxworth, Communication Studies Instructor; Sofia Velasquez Student, Portland Community College; Dr. Edward Leach, Director, NISOD .

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From May 14 - 21, more than 200 federally funded STEM projects will share short videos detailing how their work is helping to further research in the STEM fields.

This online showcase will include videos that discuss:

• Broadening participation & access to high-quality STEM experiences
• Innovative practices transforming education
• Partnerships that advance education
• Research informing STEM learning and teaching

For more information and to view the announcement in full, visit the Video Hall .

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Please join presenters Kendra Bouda and Rachael Bower on May 15, 2018, at 1 pm EDT for this free webinar on archiving with ATE Central. The presenters will share tips on organizing your materials for archiving, using the archive submission form, and tracking your submissions online.

See what happens with your submissions behind the scenes, as ATE Central staff process your materials, add metadata, and make your resources discoverable to the ATE community and beyond. You will also learn how to find curriculum and other content that ATE grantees have created and shared for you to adapt and use for your own purposes.

Please visit the registration page to sign up

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From Sunday, June 3 through Wednesday, June 6, Ashland University will be hosting a grant writing workshop for two-year college faculty members. The workshop will focus on how to effectively apply for Advanced Technological Education (ATE) grants and will include presentations, planning and writing sessions, and time to network with colleagues from institutions around the US.

Full-time faculty members in STEM disciplines are available to apply. Travel costs are available for this workshop. Please visit Ashland University's website for a full description and registration instructions. 

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Students at Tri-C ’s additive manufacturing program worked directly with disabled veterans to create assistive devices during the summer of 2017. The students, who were working on a Capstone Project by partnering with the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center, talked to a group of disabled veterans about what they would like to use these devices for. 

One veteran said he wanted to garden again. Others said they would like devices to aid in using eating utensils, shaving, and turning pages of physical books and e-books. 

The students used a 3D printer to make these assistive devices, which makes them easy to customize and for far less money than with traditional manufacturing methods. 

The instructor of the course, Maciej G. Zborowski, said he wanted his students to be able to apply methods learned in class to actual issues. “It is one thing to assign a project that is just a figment of my imagination, but I figured that it would be more impactful to test the students using problems that actually existed out in the real world,” he said.

Additive manufacturing is a growing field, especially in the medical industry. Tri-C offers a one-year certificate in their 3D...

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For those interested, MATE (Marine Advanced Technology Education) will be holding a Facebook live stream for a tutorial on Scout and Navigator Safety Inspection, followed by a Q & A session. 

The tutorial and Q & A session is scheduled for Friday, Mar. 9 at 1pm PT and is hosted by Jill Zande and Matt Gardner.

Check out MATE's Facebook page for more information on the Q & A, or visit their website to learn more about the center. 

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We'd love to have you join us for the second webinar in our 2018 spring sustainability webinar series.

Sign up here to participate in Re-visiting Your Sustainability Goals in a Post-Grant World which will be offered on Tuesday, March 6th at 1:00 pm EST. Our guest speaker is Ann Beheler from the National Convergence Technology Center.

Visit the ATE Central sustainability page to sign up for any or all three webinars in this series (or view prior webinars). You can also check out our sustainability videos, created in conjunction with the American Association of Community Colleges and Pellet Productions, featuring a group of ATE community sustainability experts including NSF's ATE Lead Program Director, Celeste Carter.

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The coastal regions of the United States, specifically the West coast, are well-known for their technology sectors. The Midwest is not exactly turning into Silicon Valley, but it certainly is seeing a rise of what has been dubbed, “mid-tech,” jobs.

Traditionally, jobs in the Midwest have been blue-collar and trade-based. This has been shifting steadily over the years to technology jobs that don’t necessarily require an advanced degree. While not an official designation, mid-tech jobs can be defined as skilled tech work that doesn’t require a college degree: just intense, focused training on the job or in vocational programs like those of blue-collar trades of the industrial past.

View the main story on Quartz for the full report and to view state-by-state statistics.

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If you are engaged in a federally-funded project to improve Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) and computer science education, you are invited to submit a video to the STEM for All Video Showcase and discuss it with researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and the general public during an interactive week-long event.

Videos that address any of the following are invited:

• Partnerships that advance education
• Broadening participation & access to high-quality STEM experiences
• Innovative practices transforming education
• Research informing STEM learning and teaching

If you are not intending to present a video this year, please save the dates anyway.  Your participation viewing the videos, discussing them with presenters, and voting for your favorites is very welcome.

Presenter Registration Deadline: Feb 15, 2018 
Video Submission Deadline: Apr 25, 2018
Interactive Event: May 14-21, 2018 

For more information: http://stemforall2018.videohall.com

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To help support project and center sustainability planning and activities, and in collaboration with ITHAKA S&R, ATE Central has been offering webinars and workshops each year on an array of sustainability-related topics. This season, Rachael Bower from ATE Central and Nancy Maron, from BlueSky to BluePrint, will focus on topics useful to centers and projects at all stages of growth. This series addresses three critical angles – first, a basic “health check” to see how your project or center is faring today; second, strategies for moving forward, with a refreshed set of goals and priorities; and finally, taking to heart the need to plan for changes concerning the most valuable asset any project has: its people.

Webinar 1: Taking Stock and Planning for Success 
Tuesday, February 6, 2018 1:00 pm EST

Click here to register

How well is your project or center doing today? Where do you want it to be tomorrow? In this session, we will introduce a series of questions - a basic “health check tool” - you can start asking that will help you identify areas of strength that you may want to develop even further, and areas of vulnerability that you will want to address. Topics we...