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In addition to the STEM curriculum and professional development materials that ATE grantees create in large volume, some members of the community also conduct research, compile reports, and share their findings with the broader STEM community. In this month’s From the Archive blog post, we highlight the work of three ATE projects and centers that have produced insightful publications that address such areas as program evaluation, educational reform, and recruitment and retention of minority students. These resources represent only a few of the assorted research reports, articles, and best practice guides created by ATE grantees; for more reports, check out the links below or try browsing our reference materials by resource type.

A Framework for Evaluating Implementation of Workforce Education Partnerships and Programs

This 10-page research brief from SRI International covers research on community college workforce educational implementation in five industries and geographic regions. This research resulted in the Workforce Education Implementation Evaluation (WEIE), “a framework for evaluating hard-to-measure aspects of the design, development, and delivery of workforce education partnerships and programs." The brief contains information about the rationale for the WEIE approach, how it works, the labor market context, partnership quality found in the research, identifying the roles of the partners, monitoring of the four key partnership strategies, information about research methods, and the implications of the WEIE framework. 

For more archived reports by Community College Partnership’s Instructional Impacts, visit the ATE Central resource portal.

Career Pathways for STEM Technicians

This 307-page Career Pathways for STEM Technicians PDF book offers a practical solution to America's technician shortage in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Career Pathways for STEM Technicians was written and compiled by Dan Hull, Executive Director of the National Center for Optics and Photonics Education (OP-TEC), with twenty-two contributors, including eight chapters from different STEM technology fields.

The book presents a solution to two problems: 1) there are not enough technicians to support continued technological innovation or to staff the organizations that could improve America's security and economic position in the world; and 2) there are not enough adequate educational opportunities for students interested in entering careers as technicians. This book "outlines the need and presents information required for an educational reform that will prepare more young people for meaningful and exciting careers in numerous fields that employ lasers and optics technology."

To learn more about Career Pathways for STEM Technicians, visit the ATE Central resource portal.

Minority Recruiting and Retention Executive Summary

This 8-page report, created by the National Convergence Technology Center (CTC), provides a summary of strategies and best practices for recruiting and retaining under-served student populations. These strategies and best practices were pulled from a variety of websites, reports, and articles and organized into clear categories. This resource was designed to provide an at-a-glance overview of ways a program can strengthen recruitment and retention.

For more archived resources by the National Convergence Technology Center (CTC), visit the ATE Central resource portal.