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As a student in the Advancing Inclusive Manufacturing program, Joshua Kimmel helped create a truly revolutionary device.

He and a staff machinist at the Human Engineering Research Laboratories (HERL) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,  worked together to design a bicycle-style hand brake that is level with Kimmel's lap as he sits in his wheelchair. With this innovation Kimmel and other manufacturing technicians with limited mobility do not have to stretch from their wheelchair seats past moving spindles and blades to shut off the milling equipment. Dalton Relich, the machinist and technical assistant at HERL, said brakes on mills have been above the shoulders of standing operators for hundreds of years.

"That is actually why I jumped into the program so wholeheartedly—is because the difficulties I encountered while I was going through the program, working in the machine shop, I was able to sit down behind the computer and draw up and design different technologies to assist myself and maybe even future participants," Kimmel said.

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ATE project and center PIs and staff understand first hand the reach and impact of community colleges and a recent report from the American Association of Community Colleges helps provide compelling evidence of the breadth and depth of community college’s positive effects on both the US economy and individual students.  

The eighty-eight page report (Where Value Meets Values) is chock full of useful data and analysis and provides an overview of public community colleges’ impact on the national economy and the return on investment for students, society at large, and individual taxpayers.

Community colleges contributed $809 billion to the United States economy in 2012. This number is equal to 5.4 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Or the entire GDP of the Netherlands. Or more than twice the net worth of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The authors also estimate that for every dollar community college students spend on tuition, they stand to gain $4.80 in increased future wages. This translates into a rate of return of 17.8% - a far cry from bank account interest rates.

Kevin L. Hulett hires graduates of the ATE-funded cybersecurity program because it blends cybersecurity with information technology instruction.

In 2006 Kevin L. Hulett graduated from Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology with three degrees: an associate of science degree in information technology (IT), an associate in applied science in IT-networking; and a bachelor of technology in information assurance and forensics. The day after graduation he went to work as a systems administrator at the college in Okmulgee, Oklahoma.

Now as associate vice president of Technology Services there, he supports "home-growing" the IT staff. Nine of the 11-member technology services employees are graduates of the OSU Institute of Technology.

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Understanding how to engage with social media and make it a useful tool that increases the reach and impact of your ATE project or center work is an ongoing process.  Integrating social media tools into daily routines and practices takes time. So whether it’s using Facebook to connect with partners and colleagues, tweeting to support recruitment, or working with students to create their own LinkedIn pages, you want to know that your efforts will bear fruit. 

Here at ATE Central we use social media primarily for outreach, and we’re always interested in understanding the best practices of these tools, particularly in educational environments.  In 2012 ATE Central, in consultation with EvaluATE and the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), conducted a survey of the ATE community to better understand how social media are being used and identify ways to use these technologies more effectively. The 2012 Social Media Survey (you can check out the full report here) built upon social media research done in 2010 by the ICTStudy.

Mary Batch, assistant manager of Human Resource Development, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Texas Inc., St. Philips College students Selena Flores and Samantha Vera, and Danine Tomlin, executive director of the Automotive Manufacturing Technical Education Collaborative (AMTEC), presented information about the Advanced Manufacturing Technology curriculum that AMTEC developed with Toyota at the 2015 ATE Principal Investigators Conference in Washington, D.C.

One of Samantha Vera's favorite stories about her friend and classmate Selena Flores is how she helped an engineer build and operate a piece of equipment in their first semester of the Advanced Manufacturing Technology Program (AMT) at St. Philips College.

"He went to a university, and we went to a community college, and she put it all together," Vera said.

At this point in the story, Flores nods her head matter-of-factly explaining that she and Vera learned basic manufacturing skills in the Alamo Area (Dual-Credit) Academies while in high school. In just one course they learned to operate a CNC machine, a milling machine, a drill press, a chop saw, and a band saw.

"It's not, what skills do we have? It's how many skills we have!" Flores said during a showcase session at the 2015 Advanced Technological Education Principal Investigators Conference.

In the lab at Flathead Valley Community College student Kim Lantrip prepares a fur sample for tests to determine if it has Canada lynx DNA.

For biotechnology student Kim Lantrip the thrill of participating in scientific discovery happened during the second semester of her biotech program at Flathead Valley Community College.

The molecular procedure for identifying wildlife species that she and classmate Brad Dixon devised and tested during spring 2015 semester is helping to determine whether Canada lynx and wolverine, two threatened species, are living in the Lost Trail National Wildlife Refuge in Montana. The animals have been seen, but a wildlife biologist needs physical evidence to seek "critical habitat" designation of the 7,885-acre refuge.    

"It's incredibly motivating, because I'm doing something that has obvious implications. I can assist this range in becoming a critical habitat, which would then help the animals," Lantrip explained last week in Washington, D.C. She was among the 60 students from across the U.S. and Guam who shared their learning experiences at the 2015 Advanced Technological Education Principal Investigators Conference in Washington, D.C., October 21 to 23. 

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Like most members of the ATE community, ATE Central is excitedly preparing for the 22nd National ATE Principal Investigator’s Conference that will be held at the Omni Shoreham in Washington, D.C., October 21-23. Through presentations, roundtables, panels, showcase sessions, and more, the Conference agenda is dedicated to helping attendees stay informed and knowledgeable about community goings-on over the past year, and providing space for project and center representatives to mingle, collaborate, and learn from one another. This year’s theme is “Preparing the Technical Workforce Through Innovation, Creativity, and Practice” and is sure to get your creative and intellectual juices flowing.

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Earlier this year, The New England Council (NEC) and Deloitte Consulting LLP released a report entitled, “Advanced to Advantageous: The Case for New England’s Manufacturing Revolution.” Responding to popular conceptions that manufacturing is declining in the northeast, the report, which expanded on a 2010 NEC-Deloitte study, revealed that the region is actually set to experience a manufacturing revolution. This is due in part to existing regional advantages as well as the replication and widespread adoption of a number of progressive programs and initiatives.

Despite the recession, advanced manufacturing has proven to be a resilient sector of the economy. In fact, as the report revealed, there are many areas in which New England is setting the pace in advanced manufacturing. These include “industry clusters,” such as medical devices and biotechnology, as well as “capability clusters,” like software and artificial intelligence, and “game-changers,” such as additive manufacturing and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Exploring Advanced Manufacturing is a free modular course at EducateWorkforce.com.

Exploring Advanced Manufacturing—an interactive, online course—offers an overview of manufacturing to help high school and two-year college students decide which type of manufacturing fits their interests and talents.

The course was created by two Advanced Technological Education centers with support from the National Science Foundation.  CA2VES, The Center for Aviation and Automotive Technology Education using Virtual E-Schools, provided the research based-instructional design of the six-module course. FLATE, the Florida Advanced Technological Education Center of Excellence, provided the manufacturing content.

The free course can be accessed at EducateWorforce.com.

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For the last several years at the HI-TEC conference a group of ATE grantees have shared tips, techniques, and tools that support dissemination and outreach. The ideas and strategies shared are created by and for ATE grantees, are designed to help broaden the impact of project and center work, and are free for anyone to use.  It’s always a great session but of course we only reach HI-TEC attendees; so after this year’s conference I thought it would be helpful to put together some of the information from the session to share with the rest of the community.