Join Nancy Maron, Program Director of Sustainability and Scholarly Communications at ITHAKA S&R, and Edward Almasy, Director and Co-PI of ATE Central, for the first webinar in our spring series: Planning, Goal Setting, and Follow-Through. As we all know, planning and goal setting in terms of grant funded projects may seem obvious: the terms of the grant spell out the aims of the work and its need, the timings and budget. Still, for multi-year grants or projects that are moving into the post-grant phase, setting achievable goals that address both the short and very long term ambitions of the initiative is harder than it looks. Date: Tuesday, February 10, 2014, 2pm eastern Length: 90 minutes Sign Up: http://www.matecnetworks.org/webreg/ate_central.php For more information on this webinar and others in the series, click here

Many ATE projects and centers rely on the web to disseminate the resources they create, though not all have the infrastructure necessary to sustain online access to these resources over time. In order to preserve the resources created by ATE awardees -- thereby broadening the impact and reach of the ATE community as a whole -- ATE Central offers a digital archiving service that is designed to provide access to these valuable materials beyond the lives of those projects and centers that created them. Come learn about the ATE Central archiving requirement, discuss strategies, and work through a basic archiving checklist! Join us at the 2014 ATE PI Conference in Washington, DC: Date: Thursday, October 23, 2014 Time: 2:30pm - 3:45pm Location: Ambassador, Omni Shoreham Hotel

ATE Central and AACC are pleased to announce the release of the 2014 ATE PI Conference mobile app! The app and companion website are designed to help you make the most of your conference experience. Use your phone, tablet, or Internet browser to create a personal schedule, stay up-to-date with the agenda and speaker lineup, search the attendee directory, and more! The app is available for iPhone or iPad as well as Android devices. To download the app, search your app store for "2014 ATE PI Conference" or simply follow the appropriate link from your mobile device. For up-to-date information on the 2014 ATE PI Conference mobile app and more about the meeting, follow @ATECentral and @Comm_College on Twitter, or visit ATE Central staff at Booth #002 (Oct 22-24)!

On September 12, Nancy Maron, Program Director of Sustainability and Scholarly Communications at Ithaka S&R, and Rachael Bower, Director and PI of ATE Central, presented a webinar providing an overview of sustainability issues of interest to ATE projects and centers. Key topics included the importance of defining what sustainability means in relation to your specific project or center deliverables and goals, how understanding your audience relates to sustainability planning, and why measuring the impact of what you’re doing is critical to the process. If you missed the webinar, you can still watch the recording.

Are you interested in designing a more effective dissemination and marketing plan for your project or center? If so, then check out ATE Central's Outreach Kit at atecentral.net/outreach. This online toolkit includes a Planning Guide to show you, step by step, how to build and execute a realistic and achievable outreach plan. Learn new and innovative ways to reach your audience and connect with the ATE community and beyond with the Social Media Guide. Use the Communications Guide to craft your project or center's message, discover new dissemination paths, and learn to build your own media kit. In addition, you will find a Resources section which will direct you to some best practices within NSF and ATE, other free and low-cost outreach tools, further helpful links, and some suggested reading. If you're ready to show Broader Impacts and ensure your NSF mission, then get started with the ATE Outreach Kit.

The National Science Foundation's Division of Undergraduate Education in the Directorate for Education and Human Resources is requesting comments on possible changes to the current program solicitation, that could include: (1) Adding specific emerging areas to expand the pool of skilled technicians in strategic advanced-technology fields; (2) increasing focus on or highlighting gaps in the program solicitation that need to be addressed; (3) developing new types of partnerships (e.g., NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnerships, partnerships with Discipline-Based Educational Researchers, partnerships with learning scientists, educational researchers and evaluators); and (4) adding Research & Development (R&D) on innovations in curricular, learning materials, tools, assessments, and faculty and student professional development.

The EvaluATE Evaluation Resource Center for Advanced Technological Education (ATE) has released their fact sheet, which summarizes data gathered in the 2011 survey of National Science Foundation (NSF) Advanced Technological Education (ATE) grant recipients. The survey was conducted by The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University, this was the eleventh annual survey of ATE projects and centers. Included in the fact sheet are statistics about the program’s grantees and their activities, accomplishments, and impacts during the 2010 calendar year. To download the fact sheet PDF click here.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) recently released a report that addresses a fundamental question about community colleges: why are so many of them unable to successfully secure federal funding for computing programs? The report, "Digitally Enhancing America's Community Colleges," offers recommendations designed to spur new grant proposals, inventive initiatives and dynamic partnerships that infuse innovation into community college computing courses and programs. For a link to the 24-page report click here. To read NSF's release about the summit, ACM, and the report click here.

To broaden its impact among two-year colleges, the National Science Foundation (NSF) asked community college educators to explain the challenges they face when applying for grants and suggest emerging issues the NSF should consider funding. The Community College Times and the American Association for Community Colleges published an article discussing NSF's aims and a recent conference that provided a venue for further discussion of the effort. For the article click here.

Revised due dates for NSF funding opportunities that fell between October 1-25, 2013 have been posted on the Resumption of Operations page on the NSF website. This includes the ATE solicitation which has been changed to November 6th, 2013. These revised dates apply whether the proposal is being submitted via the NSF FastLane system or Grants.gov.