• Increasing the quantity, quality, and diversity of industrial and engineering technicians.
• Improving college recruitment, retention, and graduation rates while reducing high school dropout rates.
• Growing industry partnerships.
• Promoting participation in faculty development.
• Providing mentoring for technician educators.

SC ATE Programs Improve Graduation Rates

SC ATE’s nationally acclaimed model programs are raising graduation rates, increasing the enrollment and persistence of minority students, and improving employer satisfaction. They are now used in 31 states, the District of Columbia, and Ontario, Canada. An independent study gave the models a rating of 4.0 on a 0-4.0 scale for “effectiveness in helping students learn the knowledge and skills and/or practices needed to be successful in the technical workplace.”

At the high school level, SC ATE’s Technology Gateway classes are improving the completion rates of at-risk students. From 2007 to 2010, 93.8% of 81 students in the White County High School Gateway program completed it and passed the math and science portions of the Georgia High School Graduation Test. At the 2-year college level, SC ATE’s Technology Gateway provides an on-ramp to engineering technology programs for underprepared students who need to strengthen prerequisite skills.

ATE Scholars, Interns & Scholarship Winners Pursue Engineering Technology Careers

ATE Scholars, the center’s internship program, has posted 10 years of excellent results with the support of the 20 companies involved in its Industry Consortium. From 2000 to 2010, the program placed 107 interns at South Carolina manufacturing, energy, construction, engineering, and IT firms. Ninety-eight of 100 ATE Scholars have graduated and gone on to careers in the engineering technology field. Seven are currently enrolled in college and placed in internships. In addition to the scholarship component of the ATE Scholars program, SC ATE manages 2 other scholarship programs. Altogether, 186 students pursuing careers in industrial, engineering, or computer technology have benefitted from SC ATE facilitated scholarships.

SC ATE Helps Replication Efforts

SC ATE assists technician educators across the country with the adaptation of successful SC ATE project-based curricula and models, including ATE Scholars, Tech Stars, and Engineering Technology Career Ambassadors. Approximately 10,000 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics students have benefited from faculty development provided by SC ATE to high school teachers and 2-year college faculty in 14 states. SC ATE curricula impacts students by teaching soft skills to complement their technical skills. For instance, the SC ATE curriculum allows students to learn and practice conflict resolution and teamwork. This promotes workplace success and smooths students’ transition to successful industrial project work when they are employed.

SC ATE Impacts ATE Community

SC ATE’s Web site www.TeachingTechnicians.org connects providers of more than 400 faculty development events with their target audience of technician educators.

The SC ATE team collaborates with subject matter experts from across ATE to develop new programs and curricula in response to industry needs. SC ATE’s e-learning teaching materials and modules on robotics, nuclear engineering technology, and virtual reality stimulate interest in technical careers, engage new students in learning, and help grow the nation’s workforce and economy.

• Strengthen the program’s evaluation knowledge base.
• Expand the use of exemplary
• evaluation practices.
• Support the continuous improvement of technician education throughout the nation.

EvaluATE’s Resources Help to Build Evaluation Capacity in the ATE Community

With an eye on accountability and improvement, ATE centers and projects need and want to demonstrate their impact on students. EvaluATE assists ATE grantees and their evaluators with this task in a variety of ways. Webinars and workshops, attended by more than 350 individuals since July 2009, are helping the ATE community to design evaluations that ultimately advance and enhance technological education. EvaluATE’s Web-based resource library contains practical materials that are especially pertinent to evaluation in the ATE context.

There is evidence that ATE grantees’ focus on evaluation is growing. The percentage of ATE grantees using external evaluators has grown from 88% in 2008 to 95% in 2010. Effective formative evaluations are leading to program improvements. Summative evaluations are helping to identify best practices and models for dissemination.

ATE Evaluation Community of Practice Connects ATE Stakeholders

EvaluATE is building and nurturing an ATE evaluation community of practice that connects center and project staff, evaluators, and other stakeholders. Through EvaluATE’s listserv, webinars, workshops, and quarterly newsletter, this community is expanding its knowledge base, problem solving around common evaluation challenges, and sharing materials and best practices. The synergy resulting from an effective and sustainable community of practice is leading to richer and more valuable evaluations that are, in turn, advancing the ATE program.

EvaluATE’s key role is developing a community of educators who conduct, use, and value evaluation as a tool for maximizing students’ success and for addressing community and workforce needs. The center helps ATE grantees connect with qualified evaluators and build evaluation into their project designs at the proposal stage and beyond. EvaluATE’s webinars, workshops, and newsletters showcase ATE grantees and evaluators who have had success in designing and using evaluation to enhance their project outcomes. With involvement from project staff and evaluators from about 20 other ATE centers and projects, EvaluATE encourages grantees to learn from each other in order to advance evaluation knowledge and practice within the ATE program.

EvaluATE’s ultimate goal is to enhance the ATE community’s use of evaluation to support the improvement of technician education.

ATE Central Connects Faculty To Full Array of ATE Resources

The tools and services in ATE Central connect faculty to a diverse collection of ATE resources and efforts designed to enhance student learning, a wide range of professional development opportunities, and an array of links to colleagues and programs in the ATE community.

By providing a pathway to the full spectrum of ATE resources and bringing together materials from multiple centers and projects in a single searchable location, ATE Central encourages cross-disciplinary learning and helps highlight the cross-disciplinary nature of today’s technician education programs.

ATE Central also supports the creation of new faculty collaborations and mentoring through an interactive interface. This interface guides users to ATE projects in their region or allows users to find all ATE centers and projects in their fields of interest.

ATE Central Amplifies ATE Program Efforts

In a multitude of ways, ATE Central showcases the aggregate impact of the ATE program for those within the ATE community as well as for those from industry, education, and the general public. It does this by supporting cross-programmatic collaborations within the ATE community and across National Science Foundation program areas.

ATE Central also provides ATE center and project personnel with a rich array of resources and tools to make their own programs more robust.

ATE Central’s open source software, Collection Workflow Integration System (CWIS), makes it easy to build searchable collections of materials, access best practice documentation for digital library creation and maintenance, and use tools that help track data about the usage and impact of ATE materials.

As an information hub for technical educators and ATE grant recipients, ATE Central provides an overview of events offered by centers and projects. ATE Central supports national dissemination efforts for ATE centers and projects through the creation and sharing of resource records in the ATE Central portal. These records, which describe the valuable resources created and collected by centers and projects, are harvested by the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) and the Applied Math and Science Education Repository (AMSER). These 2 National Science Foundation-supported portals to free educational resources and services make ATE materials more accessible to a broad range of educators, librarians, and researchers nationwide.

MPICT Improves ICT Student Success

In the information and knowledge economies of the 21st century, people increasingly depend on information and communication technologies (ICT). The ICT term is used worldwide to encompass all rapidly emerging, evolving, and converging computer, software, networking, telecommunications, Internet, programming, and information systems technologies. ICT enables individual and organizational productivity in all industries.

Community colleges are the most cost-effective vehicle for pushing ICT knowledge and skills into American communities and workforces. MPICT efforts have affected as many as 50,000 students through engagement with over 900 faculty taking advantage of conferences, faculty development, and access to a content-rich media. With the receipt of a grant from the California Community College Chancellor’s Office to establish a California Community College ICT Collaborative, MPICT’s efforts are being leveraged to coordinate and improve ICT educational offerings to all 112 of California’s community colleges, serving 1 in 4 community college students in the U.S.

MPICT’s annual Winter ICT Educator Conference brings together more than 200 community college faculty members and industry representatives to share quality practices and resources. This event alone impacts 15,000 to 25,000 students annually. MPICT’s annual Summer Faculty Development Week helps 50 to 75 educators keep up with rapidly changing technologies, learn new course material, and practice effective pedagogies for teaching ICT. Educators also learn ways to use technology to improve student engagement and outcomes.

MPICT Engages with ICT

MPICT applies ICT in its dissemination strategy with a content-rich website at www.mpict.org which has had more than 40,000 page views and averages 20 site visits daily; a dedicated YouTube channel at youtube.com/mpictcenter that has over 60 videos and over 13,000 views to date; a Facebook page at facebook.com/MPICT with almost 60,000 post views; and a blog at mpictcenter.blogspot.com with almost 500 articles and more than 20,000 article views to date.

MPICT has pioneered remote synchronous and asynchronous access to its Winter Conference presentations through online collaboration tools, expanding the impact of the event beyond physical attendees.  Conference sessions have been viewed more than 2,000 times on a system available only to community college ICT faculty and several thousand more times for selected presentations converted and shared through MPICT’s YouTube Channel.

Developing a Skilled ICT Workforce

The improved student outcomes influenced by MPICT events and dissemination of best practices enhances the ICT workforce, which positively impacts most organizations, all industries, and the U.S. economy. MPICT, as a representative of ICT programs at 70 community colleges, engages business and industry representatives more effectively than most individual programs can achieve on their own. MPICT does this by creating leveraged education and business interactions to improve ICT education, workforce development, and placement.

Through ongoing studies and publication of its assessments of ICT workforce needs, MPICT has positioned itself as a major participant in the important task of identifying trends and guiding the curriculum-improvement efforts of its community college members. For example, a recent MPICT study surveyed more than 600 employers to quantify ICT industry and employment issues in California. The study found that the ICT workforce represents 1 in 20 U.S. jobs. This analysis of industry trends and demands provides MPICT’s community college partners with more valuable information than they could readily obtain through local advisory groups or from existing secondary data sources.

ICT Center Builds Community of Practice

In 2007, the National Center for Telecommunications Technologies (NCTT) formed an Information and Communications Technologies Community of Practice (ICT COP) to provide community colleges with program assistance, a forum for the exchange of ideas, an interactive workspace, and a dynamic library. Three years later, the organization adopted a new name—Information and Communications Technologies Center (ICT Center)—and expanded its role as a resource center to become the hub of a vibrant, growing ICT COP.

As it has redefined what an Advanced Technological Education (ATE) resource center does, ICT Center has found a unique niche among the ATE community. By hurdling traditional barriers of information-sharing and utilizing emerging technologies to reach, support, and educate students, faculty, business, and industry throughout the United States, ICT Center makes content on current and emerging trends and information from subject-matter experts readily available.

ICT Center Engages Community Via New Media Technologies

ICT Center is a leader in the utilization of new media technologies to disseminate technician education information. The information, once disseminated, is used by thousands of individuals who view the information and use it to teach or to enhance their personal technical knowledge. During 2010, ICT Center reached more than 400,000 users through blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube videos, and podcasts. As a National Science Foundation ATE Resource Center, ICT Center staff members share their expertise in new media technologies with the ATE community and other community college educators. Their hands-on presentations at conferences throughout the country have prompted many educators, students, and members of the technical workforce to utilize social media tools.

Twitter is a particularly powerful outreach tool for ICT Center. Klout.com has referred to the ICT Center principal investigator’s Twitter network as “large and highly engaged.” With nearly 7,000 subscribers, the center’s tweets are estimated to reach approximately 1,800 active followers. The center’s 1,000 tweets per year translate into 1.8 million contacts of ICT-related content per year.

Twitter and the other Web-based technologies the center uses transform monologues on ICT content and issues into dialogues. They enable audience members to transition from content consumers to content producers. They facilitate real-time exchanges of expert knowledge, and they are reaching diverse U.S. and international communities.

Conferences Enhance Faculty lCT Knowledge

Conferences are another way ICT Center engages with its COP. During 2010, ICT Center shared curriculum development materials and technical information directly with 1,048 conference and workshop participants. Faculty participation in these activities has impacted the education of more than 50,000 students.

Ninety-one percent of the 132 attendees at the 2010 ICT Winter Conference reported 6 months later that they are continuing to network with other participants. Fifty-four percent indicated they were “extremely likely” to implement the ideas and concepts they learned at the conference in their classrooms.

Center Continues Incumbent Workforce Instruction

The ICT Center provides path breaking work in information and communications technology curriculum development and education to colleges, organizations and corporations around the world.”

• Assisting the U.S. Department of Labor in creating a national Geospatial Technology Competency Model (GTCM).
• Establishing national common core competencies for geographic information systems (GIS) technicians.
• Facilitating installation of remote desktop application access technology at 10 colleges and supporting use at secondary and middle schools.
• Increasing enrollment in geospatial technology programs at partner colleges.
• Updating the geospatial technology skills of teachers and technicians.

Students Access Geospatial Technologies Thanks to GeoTech Center

GeoTech Center’s work on remote desktop application access technology makes it possible for students in middle and secondary schools to gain direct access to the most current geospatial application software. By eliminating the need for complicated installation and maintenance of application software, GeoTech Center facilitates direct access to the latest geospatial technology by students who might not otherwise experience it.

The new Geospatial Technology Competency Model (GTCM), which the center helped the U.S. Department of Labor develop, clarifies how geospatial educators should align their curricula with new national standards. The GTCM may also lead to professional certification that will document graduates’ expertise to employers.

The GIS general education course developed by GeoTech Center partners is another example of the innovations it is pursuing to help students transfer geospatial technology courses from community colleges to universities. It is contributing to the growth of geospatial technology programs at 2-year colleges.

GeoTech Center Helps Industry, Education With National Competency Model

GeoTech Center assisted the Department of Labor in completing the new Geospatial Technology Competency Model (GTCM) now published in its Employment and Training Administration model clearinghouse. This national model of critical worker skills and competencies provides the industry with a definition of its cross-cutting, common core competencies as well as its specialized industry sector segments. Before the GTCM and the resulting Standard Occupation Codes, there was no common definition of the industry or its sectors.

With the GTCM, managers and human resource officers can now better define the skills and abilities required by the 10 distinct occupations supported by the GTCM. This boosts efforts to improve the alignment of academic curricula and workforce education with workplace needs and demands. No longer do educators or employers need to puzzle about what should be taught to whom in the industry. From its research, GeoTech Center has created new tools for educators to assess their own courses and programs of study to see how well they align with the national standard and to perform critical gap-analysis between their programs and courses and the GTCM.

New professional standards for certification and recognition in the industry are being developed as a result of the research GeoTech Center has performed for the GTCM. These include the GIS Certification Institute’s new competency-based exam for its GIS Professional certification.

• Developing IA curricula with degree and certificate programs, model courses, articulation agreements, and career pathways.
• Providing faculty professional development with CyberWatch workshops and graduate school tuition subsidies.
• Mentoring faculty as they map courses to national training standards.
• Developing the IA skills of students at all levels with competitions, internships, job fairs, student clubs, and after-school and summer-school programs.
• Promoting public cybersecurity awareness of cyber ethics, safety, and security.

CyberWatch Workforce Development Encompasses Elementary Through Graduate School Programs

CyberWatch improves the IA workforce with activities for students from kindergarten through graduate school and professional development for faculty. Students enrolled in IA programs at CyberWatch’s 54 member institutions gain direct access to the cybersecurity workforce through CyberWatch’s strong connections to the National Security Agency (NSA), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), industry associations, and private cybersecurity enterprises.

CyberWatch Leads Multidiscipline Efforts At 2-Year Colleges

Working with NSA, DHS, and the National Science Foundation, CyberWatch played a key role in developing and implementing the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance 2-Year Education program known as CAE2Y. CyberWatch mentors all aspiring CAE2Y community colleges, helping them refine and document their IA programs to meet the stringent requirements for CAE2Y established by the NSA.

CyberWatch Branches Out to Develop IA Workforce

Since its inception in 2005 as a consortium of 10 educational institutions in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, CyberWatch has

• Grown to 54 member institutions—36 community colleges and 18 universities—across 21 states plus the District of Columbia.
• Acquired more than 30 partners among businesses, government agencies, and professional associations.
• Developed model IA curricula, including complete courses for associate in applied science and associate in science degrees and for 2 IA certificates.
• Assisted both 2-year and 4-year educational institutions in mapping their IA courses to the Committee on National Security Systems (CNSS) 4011 and/or 4013 national IA training standards.
• Mentored the 6 community colleges eligible to apply to NSA for the CAE2Y designation through the application process; all 6 CAE2Y applications were approved in 2010.
• Educated more than 450 faculty through CyberWatch workshops and sponsored courses at member institutions.
• Created a robust IA program for K-12 students, including a new IA curriculum track for high schools, summer camps, after-school programs, security awareness days, student contests, and workshops for counselors.
• Built the Montgomery College Virtual Lab, the University of Maryland Digital Forensics Lab, and the Bowie State University CyberWatch Underground Tunnel System. CyberWatch’s Virtual Lab 2.0 is now in the preliminary design stage.

• Strategic business engagement and business partnerships drive its programs.
• Low-cost, high-return college mentoring launches new courses, certificates, and degrees.
• Green Information Technology and mobile convergence curriculum, and professional development are cutting edge.
• Recruiting strategies attract underserved populations, specifically Hispanic populations

CTC Impacts Student Success Via Faculty Education & Mentoring Through initiatives launched by CTC:

• Thirty-eight students from 2 CTC partner colleges—Collin College and El Centro College of the Dallas County Community College District—have transferred into the Bachelor of Arts in Information Technology degree program offered at the University of North Texas, the third CTC partner institution. This new degree incorporates innovative components and accepts a large number of transfer hours from CTC’s convergence curriculum.
• Five hundred faculty from community colleges around the country have attended weeklong intensive educational programs at Working Connections IT Faculty Development Institute, sponsored by CTC. This professional development has prepared attendees to teach over 4,000 students in these specific topic areas.
• Forty-one new programs have been launched as a result of Working Connections Faculty Development Institute.
• Seventeen colleges mentored by CTC have implemented new certificate and degree programs resulting in enrollments of 4,017 new students in 2008, and 5,091 new students in 2009.

CTC Heeds Business Advice For Well-Prepared Graduates

It is no exaggeration to say that the work of the Convergence Technology Center is and has been owned by the broad range of engaged business people on its Business Advisory Council (BAC). Post 9-11 when IT employment dropped, the center used a modified, development-of-curriculum industry-panel process to identify the knowledge and skills that the BAC members predicted would be needed in the next round of network support professionals they would hire. These skills were then cross-referenced to existing courses, and new curricula were developed. The BAC continues to meet quarterly to advise CTC colleges and refine the job skills list to reflect emerging demands that faculty then incorporate in curricula. As a result, the job skills list includes new topics such as unified communication, virtualization, and Green IT.

Because of the BAC’s involvement, graduates of 2-year degree programs affiliated with CTC readily find employment with median incomes between $43,000 and $48,000.

CTC has also worked integrally with North Central Texas InterLink, Inc., a nonprofit consortium of businesses and educational entities, to characterize the emerging job category of convergence technician. InterLink considers convergence technician a defined category and provides regular employment forecasts for it. Based on responses from 347 business people, InterLink reported that 400 convergence technicians had been hired in the region during 2010. InterLink forecasts that 1,400 additional technicians will be hired in North Texas within 5 years. Further, the Texas Workforce Commission projects at least 1,410 Texas job openings due to growth and 1,000 replacements by 2016.

CSSIA Instructs Cybersecurity Educators

Since 2004, CSSIA has instructed more than 2,000 teachers and college faculty in cybersecurity. Surveys show that 73% or 1,460 are already using or plan to use curricula and instructional materials provided at the professional development programs. In follow-up interviews, most of the educators reported that learning how to implement hands-on, complex laboratory exercises was the most valuable aspect of the workshops.

CSSIA Directly Impacts Students

CSSIA’s impact on student success has been extraordinary. Carlos Marquez, Jr., an information technology (IT) graduate from Moraine Valley Community College, is an example of a successful student. He explains, “As a high school graduate in 2005, I was accepted to many universities, but Moraine Valley’s Center for Systems Security and Information Assurance had the right staff and equipment. CSSIA gave me the opportunity to enhance my skills, have an internship, and participate in the [Collegiate] Cyber Defense Competition. If it was not for CSSIA, I would not be where I am today: employed by Secureworks, Inc.”

CCDCs Give Students Experience With Real-World Security Challenges

CSSIA operates the Midwest Collegiate Cyber Defense Competitions (CCDC) providing students with hands-on cybersecurity experiences. Since organizing the first Midwest competition in 2006, CSSIA has consistently held both state and regional competitions. In 2008, CSSIA formed the Competition Industry Advisory Board, which has increased industry participation and added more real-world workplace experiences to the competitions. Recently, the center created and now administers the CSSIA Virtualization Data Center (CVDC), a remote virtual laboratory environment to enhance the quality and quantity of competitions nationwide.

A total of 872 students participated in the competitions from 2006 to 2010. In post-competition surveys, 83% of the students indicated that the competitions were an accurate test of their technical and soft skills. The students also report that the competitions make them more certain that IT careers are right for them. More than 90% of the respondents plan to enter IT careers. Other career affirmation sometimes comes from the employers who volunteer at the competitions—employers have been known to invite participants to interview for jobs on the spot. More than 300 students are registered to participate in CSSIA’s competitions during 2011.

CSSIA has also sponsored 3 annual Cyber Defense and Disaster Recovery Conferences where more than 600 industry, government, and academic professionals have gathered to enhance the technical expertise of the cybersecurity workforce.