Online registration for this year’s HI-TEC (High Impact Technology Exchange Conference) is currently open through July 10, 2025.

HI-TEC 2025 will be held July 21-24 at the Minneapolis Marriott City Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Supported by the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education (NSF ATE) program, this annual conference focuses on preparing the nation’s current and future workforce of skilled technicians. HI-TEC will bring together educators, industry leaders, trade organizations, and professionals to collaboratively address the evolving demands of technological landscapes and advanced technological education. The conference will explore a wide range of concepts across sectors, including artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, biotechnology, and advanced manufacturing.

HI-TEC will feature two days of pre-conference workshops and specialized interest groups on July 21 and 22, followed by over 100 breakout sessions on emerging areas, workforce development trends, strategies for engaging learners, addressing current challenges in education, and partnerships between academia and industry. Attendees will have the opportunity to network, interact with...

This year, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond (Richmond Fed) aims to learn more about the ancillary services - including career counseling, childcare, mental health, and transportation - provided by public community colleges. As reported by the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), there has been growing interest on the subject since the COVID-19 pandemic and Richmond Fed's 2024 general survey, which briefly asked about wraparound services. The topic will face a closer look this year, with a separate survey including all community colleges and two-year educational institutions.

The survey is now open until June 27, 2025. Community college employees who work or have knowledge of student affairs or services are encouraged to participate. Access the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond's 2025 Wraparound Services Survey here.

A variety of stakeholders are interested to see the data, including state organizations, professional organizations, funding sources, legislators, and educators, according to Richmond Fed. The 10-15 minute survey on wraparound services will investigate what options are currently being provided, barriers to implementation, funding structures, and more.

The Advanced Manufacturing Technical Education Collaborative (AMTEC) invites educators to participate in a two-day professional training program on July 10-11 or October 7-8, 2025, in Owensboro, Kentucky. Intended for secondary and post-secondary faculty members in advanced manufacturing, sessions will cover key Industry 4.0 topics, the intricacies of competency-based education, uses of virtual reality in the classroom, and resources for funding. Attendees will receive hands-on training and interact with a wide array of curricular resources, with the opportunity to access ongoing Community-of-Practice sessions offered virtually each month. 

Learn more about the Institute for Industry 4.0 Innovation training sessions on AMTEC's website. To register, please call 270-686-4410 or email Cadie Underwood at [email protected]. 

Based on data from ten local community colleges, a newly released report from California Completes highlights key takeaways and strategies for recruiting and retaining adult learners. Of those studied, institutions that employed a strategic enrollment management framework tailored to adults - including targeted outreach, flexible class scheduling, comprehensive academic monitoring with early interventions, community partnerships, and data-informed action - saw notable increases in both student enrollment rates and learner academic performance.

The report from California Completes also discusses common barriers faced by the studied community colleges, such as resource constraints, system infrastructure, and inadequate staffing. It goes on to provide recommendations for community colleges looking to strengthen enrollment and retention strategies. This includes leveraging data to focus  and streamline initiatives, fostering partnerships with the community, supporting collaboration across campus, and pivoting to student-focused course scheduling.

Read the full brief here.

Normandale Community College will be offering four of its Vacuum Technology classes (VACT) from May 27 to July 27, 2025. To support professional development in vacuum and thin film technology instruction, faculty and educators can audit these courses at no cost. All classes are provided through an asynchronous, online format. 

The following VACT classes are being offered by Normandale Community College this summer:

VACT 1010 (Foundations of Vacuum Science), 2 credits - starts June 2 and ends July 25, 2025.  

VACT 1293 (Concepts of Rough Vacuum Systems), 1 credit - starts May 27 and ends July 3, 2025. 

VACT 1300 (Introduction to Vacuum System Automation), 1 credit - starts May 27 and ends July 3, 2025.  

VACT 2290 (High Vacuum Equipment), 1 credit - starts May 27 and ends July 3, 2025.

Please contact Nancy Louwagie ([email protected]) for assistance with course registration or if you have any questions pertaining to this summer's offerings.

Mentor-Connect's NSF ATE Budget and Forms webinar will occur on May 21, 2025 from 3:00-4:00PM ET. It will cover personnel direct costs, fringe benefits, biosketches, synergistic activities, charts of accounts (COAs), and more. Register here on Mentor Connect's website. 

Based at Florence-Darlington Technical College, Mentor-Connec provides one-on-one mentorship, professional development opportunities, technical assistance, and focused ATE grant proposal support to two-year academic institutions and their faculty. Beyond its live webinars, it also offers a robust resource library of past webinars, quick reference guides, checklists, and other tools, support prospective and current grantees of the NSF ATE program. 

The 2025 NICE Conference & Expo will occur June 1-4, 2025, in Denver, Colorado. Hosted by Florida International University and New America, this National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)-sponsored event will dive into the theme “Climbing Higher: Educating & Sustaining a Resilient Cybersecurity Workforce.” Each year, the conference brings together leaders in academia, industry, and government to explore how to best support skilled workforce development in the adaptive, dynamic field of cybersecurity.

Attendees at the 2025 NICE Conference & Expo will complete a half-day of focused workshops followed by two days of valuable presentations, insights, and networking opportunities with innovators in cybersecurity education and training. Registration is open through May 26, with employers, managers, educators, advisors, policymakers, and students encouraged to attend.

Learn more about the event on the NICE Conference & Expo website.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently awarded $20 million to expand CloudBank, a program that facilitates access to advanced cloud computing for research in the sciences and engineering. Championed by UC San Diego in partnership with UC Berkeley and the University of Washington, the expansion to CloudBank 2.0 will improve access to artificial intelligence modeling, computing power, and other cloud service for academic institutions of all sizes.

CloudBank 2.0 will also continue to facilitate partnerships with key players in the private sector, such as Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, supporting innovation while strengthening the technology workforce. 

Read more about the recent grant on NSF's website. 

Released in March 2025, a new report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center details current trends surrounding transfer enrollment. The interactive report describes a number of key highlights relevant for policy makers, faculty, and leaders in education.

Metrics from fall 2024 show that transfers into community colleges have grown beyond the pandemic’s fall 2020 levels, while transfer rates from two-year to four-year academic institutions still have not recovered to pre-pandemic numbers. As noted in the Clearinghouse's report, from fall 2023 to fall 2024, there was an over four-percent growth in learners who transferred to a new institution, and returning students now comprise the majority of transfer enrollments.

Learn more about the National Student Clearinghouse’s research and report, available here.

The April/May issue of the American Association of Community Colleges’ (AACC) Community College Journal is now available online and in print through subscription. A featured publication by AACC, this journal provides contemporary information, insights, strategies, and connections for those in academia, industry, government, and workforce development.

The latest issue highlights:

• Supporting the needs and goals of parenting learners
• Strategically planning in a dynamic, evolving landscape
• Using trauma-informed strategies in higher education
• Leveraging artificial intelligence to assist with the transfer process
• Meeting workforce demands amidst the emergence of Web 3.0

AACC's April/May publication of the Community College Journal can be accessed online here, and archived issues can be viewed in AACC’s library.