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This October, with support from NSF, the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) will once again hold the biggest ATE gathering of the year in Washington, DC: the National ATE Principal Investigators Conference. For projects and centers old and new, the annual conference offers a chance to share, collaborate, learn, and meet with other innovative members of the ATE community, including PIs, select project and center staff, and NSF program officers. ATE Central is particularly excited about this year’s meeting; after all, ATE only turns 21 once!

Along with other projects and centers, ATE Central is gearing up to host and assist with a number of events at this year’s conference. In getting ready to head to DC, many of us will be double checking website material, creating handouts or workshop material, and generally making sure that our project and center information is up to date. A number of ATE Central services and tools may be helpful in your efforts, as you get ready for the 2014 Conference:

Daniel Horine, center, teaches students in the mechatronics lab at Virginia Western Community College.

Daniel Horine, principal investigator of two National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education (ATE) project grants, sees the high demand for mechatronics technicians, who have a combination of mechanical, electrical and computer skills, as evidence of their career opportunities and their importance to manufacturers whose output influences the nation's economic health.

"Mechatronics is thinking about the end in mind and [about] how we are going to integrate these systems from the beginning ... I want mechatronics and the integrated approach to be a way of teaching, and break down the silos and barriers, so that we are setting up our students for success," Horine said.

Horine received the Educator of the Year Award at the High Impact Technology Exchange Conference (HI-TEC) for developing the Mechatronics Systems Engineering Technology associate in applied science degree at Virginia Western Community College (VWCC) in Roanoke, Virginia. At the HI-TEC conference Horine explained that helping other people succeed is the most gratifying aspect of his professional life. "Knowing that I'm helping them have a career so they can provide for their family, that's a pretty noble cause in my opinion," he said.

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The ATE Student Success Story videos, created in collaboration with WGBH, Boston, highlight the struggles and triumphs of a diverse set of students in ATE project and center settings. With support and guidance from PIs, staff, and industry partners, their lives and careers have been changed for the better. Each video documents a unique success story, but all of them have a common theme: technician training has the power to change lives. Below are brief overviews of five of the ten videos created over the last several years. Visit the ATE Central Student Success Story pages for a full overview of all ten stories. The videos are a great way to promote the work of ATE projects and centers and can be used freely in educational settings to help bring attention to the importance and impact of workforce development and community college programs in general and the ATE program in particular.

Mel Cossette coaches Jonathon Beck on the final details for submitting his Advanced Technological Eduction grant proposal during the Mentor-Connect leadership development workshop in Chicago. Cossette is executive director of the MatED National Resource Center. Beck is an instructor at Northland Community and Technical College in East Grand Fork, Minnesota.

Mentor-Connect's leadership development strategies and proposal-writing advice get big thumbs up from its mentees.

"It has been the most fantastic experience I've had professionally in years," said Jacqueline Smith, assistant professor of Engineering Technology at Chattanooga State Community College.

She and four other community college educators who were in the first Mentor-Connect cohort enthusiastically endorsed the Advanced Technological Education outreach initiative at a Mentor-Connect workshop on July 22 in Chicago. All of the speakers had recently received official notice from the National Science Foundation that the grant proposals they had prepared with Mentor-Connect's guidance were funded.

The application process for the third cohort of Mentor-Connect mentees for 2014-15 is now open. Twenty colleges will be selected to receive mentoring on the basis of applications that are due October 10. See http://www.mentor-connect.org for more information.

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Newsletters are a valuable outreach tool for ATE projects and centers hoping to build relationships and disseminate information. Yet, doing it right requires a lot of foresight, juggling of different types of content and pieces, and focused awareness of your mission, goals, and intended audience. In our July issue of the ATE Central Connection, we featured The WomenTech Educators Newsletter as a wonderful example in terms of the quality and quantity of its content. Donna Milgram, Executive Director of the National Institute for Women in Trades, Technology & Science (IWITTS) shared with us the history, successes, and lessons learned from working on this exemplary e-newsletter. Keep reading for the complete interview, followed by some helpful links on best practices and analytic tools to help create a successful e-newsletter.

As a Chemist I at INOVA Diagnostics Inc., Tracy T. Ludwick Naputi tests raw materials, in-process components, and finished reagents associated with ELISA products.

Knowing that she could support her children with a career in biotechnology helped Tracy T. Ludwick Naputi extricate herself from an abusive marriage.

“I used every negative aspect of my life as a thing to motivate me instead of to bring me down. I used it to be my drive to do better,” she explained in an interview following her presentation on a Faces of Success panel on June 23 at the Community College Program at BIO, the international convention of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) in San Diego.

In 2012 Naputi was hired as a Lab Assistant II by INOVA Diagnostics Inc. The annual average salary of bioscience workers was $88,202 in 2012, according to the Battelle/BIO State Bioscience Jobs, Investments and Innovation 2014 report released at the convention. Biotechnology uses organisms and biology-based processes to create products.

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The Florida Advanced Technological Education Center (FLATE) recently published an insightful article on the growth and expansion of apprenticeships and co-ops as they work to address the workforce skills gap in the May issue of the FLATE Focus blog. The following text has been re-posted with their permission.

Executive Director Discusses Role of Apprenticeships and Co-ops in Addressing Workforce Skills Gap

Earlier this month President Obama announced additional funding opportunities from the Department of Labor for Community Colleges under the TAACCCT program (Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training) and separately, additional funding for apprenticeship programs. The second, $100,000,000 will be awarded later this year from H1-B funds for American Apprenticeship Grants. Apprenticeships are a proven path to employment and the middle class: 87% of apprentices are employed after completing their programs with an average starting wage for completers of over $50,000. The program will support several innovative projects that include: scale in-demand job training across the country through national industry partnerships; advance education & training to ensure seamless progressions, and improve statewide employment and education data integration and use.

Based on its survey of 625 businesses, the National Center for Supply Chain Technology Education (SCTE) estimates that 61,000 more supply chain technicians will be needed in 2015 than were employed in 2013.

To ensure that a science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) degree actually leads to employment, students must prepare themselves for high-demand STEM fields, Elaine L. Craft, director of SC ATE Center of Excellence, said during a recent industry roundtable discussion with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker at the Clemson University Center for Workforce Development.

Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Centers' industry surveys are excellent sources of information for students looking for careers in STEM fields with growth potential. Several of the most recent ATE industry surveys have identified strong demand for photonics technicians, supply chain technicians, computer and information technology (IT) technicians, and microsystems technicians.

Harley Wheeler (far left) and Jesse McDonald (middle), both juniors at Lewiston High School, talk over the design of their robot's arm with mentor Bryce Winterbottom, an associate mechanical engineer at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories. Their robot received a silver award at the Idaho SKILLS USA competition.

Industry mentors are helping Idaho high school educators transition from teaching traditional agriculture, woods, and metal shop classes to teaching engineering technology programs.

Teachers at the two largest high schools in the project report their mentors' expertise is filling gaps in their programs. "It got the kids really interested in learning technological design, because they were able to see that it's real world," Moscow High School Teacher Zachary Russell said of assistance he has received from Mike Meehan, president of Biketronics Inc.

Jesse McDonald, a Lewiston High School student, summarized the value of the help he has received from Bryce Winterbottom, an associate mechanical engineer at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (SEL) in Pullman, Washington, this way: "He knows what he's doing and he can tell us what we should do. And [he] teaches us how to do what we're doing better, how to avoid specific things you should not do in programming and building [robots]."

Wind energy technology students at Laramie County Community College work on yaw motors, the AC induction motors with planetary gears that turn turbines into the wind so they produce maximum electric energy.

Just three years after earning a wind energy associate degree from Laramie County Community College (LCCC), Travis Ford has been promoted by NextEra Energy Resources, LLC, from technician to associate wind site supervisor. Among his first supervisory tasks is the hiring of nine technicians to maintain the expansion of the company's Limon Wind Energy Center located about 90 minutes from Denver, Colorado.

Ford said strong mentors and his education helped him advance quickly. "Definitely my background, the schooling at LCCC helped me prepare for being a good wind technician and being able to step into leadership roles as needed," he said. Ford graduated from LCCC's two-year degree wind energy degree program in the spring of 2011. He was promoted in April 2014.

Demand remains strong for graduates of LCCC's wind energy program, which has received two Advanced Technological Education grants from the National Science Foundation since 2008. Six of the eight wind energy students who will graduate from LCCC in May already have jobs lined up, according to Bryan Boatright, the wind energy instructor at the public two-year college in Cheyenne, Wyoming. He expects the other two students to have jobs in some aspect of power generation before they graduate.

The starting salaries of new LCCC wind technology graduates range from $45,000 to $60,000 annually, Boatright said. A technician who travels for work assignments receives a per diem allowance for expenses along with a pay rate of about $17 per hour.