The 16th Annual VESTA Curriculum Retreat brings together industry members, VESTA instructors and VESTA Management Team members to review, revise and refine the expansive VESTA grape, wine and entrepreneurship curriculum. In addition to a thorough review of the curriculum, the focus this year will be the identification of new approaches and technologies that should be embedded in VESTA courses; identifying appropriate content and technical modules to be incorporated into the computer instructional vineyard and winery simulations; and the continued development and refinement of job standards for the expansion of the Registered Apprenticeship Program.

In this webinar, presenters will share 10 strategies for adapting to this new evaluation reality. These strategies will help participants rethink evaluation plans amidst project changes and disruptions, engage stakeholders virtually, and adapt to remote data collection. Participants will have a chance to hear from other evaluators and share their own successes and struggles with adjusting evaluation practices in the era of social distancing. This webinar will provide practical tools to apply to evaluation work during this time of uncertainty and change. 

The Cyber2yr2020 curriculum content focuses on student competencies in the cognitive framework of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy, and contains 58 competencies across eight security domains plus cross-cutting concepts. Each domain is further divided into subdomains with associated learning outcomes. The competencies and learning outcomes are designated as either Essential or Supplemental.

Panelists in this webcast will introduce the Cyber2yr2020 guidelines, which are applicable to both applied and transfer programs, and discuss how they could be used to create or update a two-year Cybersecurity program. Alignment with other frameworks of interest will be highlighted, including the CAE-CD Knowledge Units, the NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework, and ABET criteria for Cybersecurity programs. Program examples will be presented, and a process for correlating two-year Cybersecurity programs with the Cyber2yr2020 guidelines will be shared, along with the benefits of doing so.

An innovative seminar designed for mid-level community college administrators who are ready to move into a higher level of leadership. The AACC John E. Roueche Future Leaders Institute is a 3-day seminar designed for department chairs, deans, assistant/associate deans, or directors who look to advance into a senior leadership role. The Roueche – FLI will provide participants the opportunity to hone leadership skills and engage in a dialogue with experienced community college leaders and develop a network of colleagues from around the country.

National Cyber Summit is the nation’s most innovative cyber security-technology event, offering unique educational, collaborative and workforce development opportunities for industry visionaries and rising leaders. NCS offers more value than similar cyber conferences with diverse focus-areas, premier speakers, and unmatched accessibility. The core focus is on three things: education, collaboration and innovation.

A national conference entitled Preparing the Drone Workforce professional development workshop series was planned for March in Colonial Williamsburg, VA, and cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Working together with NACCE, the conference has been reimagined as a series of four half-day webinars that will take place through the month of June. The sessions include much of the original content planned for our in-person event in Williamsburg, and brings in additional areas of focus. 

Register today for the Preparing the Drone Workforce professional development four-part webinar series to:

• hear best practices for effective UAS courses/programs of study
• discuss topics relevant to creating and sustaining a drone workforce pipeline
• learn about key UAS educational offerings and industry initiatives
• be among the first to learn about emerging trends in the industry

Registration is $59 per webinar or $200 for the entire series.

Drone industry partners and UAS end-users will spotlight the growing demand for various applications, from package delivery to search and rescue, precision agriculture, real estate, transportation, infrastructure inspection, and many others. 

This year's theme reflects on the passion, drive and risk-taking of an industry that consistently strives to accomplish things that others might deem impossible—an industry that goes BEYOND. 

For 2020, the BIO International Convention will transition to a new, virtual event format, BIO Digital. This virtual gathering of the global biotech industry provides access to key partners via BIO One-on-One Partnering, educational resources to help drive your business, and the insights you need to continue critical research and development. 

We may not be able to gather in person, but nothing stops innovation.

The project is designed to help faculty increase students' interest and engagement in the study and learning of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) principles, practices, and careers through guitar design and building. The Summer Institutes are open to all STEM subject area educators in the 9-12 High school grade levels, community college levels and freshman/sophomore university instruction. Participants will join the existing cohort of STEM Guitar Institute Educators/Fellows around the country teaching STEM content using the guitar as a focus. Fellows help each other with project implementation and contribute to the project’s Applied Learning Community, curriculum and assessment. You will receive a $300 stipend, a completed guitar, a support package at the Institute, and will have the opportunity to apply for a limited number of start-up packages to help launch STEM guitar at your school.

Description: The first course in the CCNA curriculum introduces the architectures, models, protocols, and networking elements that connect users, devices, applications and data through the internet and across modern computer networks – including IP addressing and Ethernet fundamentals. By the end of the course, students can build simple local area networks (LANs) that integrate IP addressing schemes, foundational network security, and perform basic configurations for routers and switches.

Instructors with prior NetAcad Cisco 1 experience are not required to take this class again, unless they want to see what the new format looks like.

Prerequisite: Working knowledge of computers.

In partnership with the National Geospatial Technology Center of Excellence, Jefferson Community and Technical College-Southwest Campus will host the 13th annual GeoEd `20 Conference.

For the first time in history, GeoEd will be offered as a virtual conference!

The National Science Foundation (NSF) recognizes that there is much uncertainty among ATE grantees regarding how to start or to proceed with your ATE projects during the Covid-19 public health emergency. This webinar is designed to address commonly asked grant management questions to assist the ATE community and will cover such topics as no-cost extensions; supplemental funding requests; changes in project objectives, deliverables, timeline, and scope; budget adjustments; evaluation plans; and annual reporting. Conducted in partnership with the American Association of Community Colleges, Mentor-Connect, and ATE Central, the webinar will feature an opportunity to hear from experienced PIs and from NSF lead ATE program director, V. Celeste Carter. To further support the ATE community, the webinar will be followed by an ATE Central Office Hours, via Zoom, for an opportunity to interact directly with presenters and NSF program directors to continue the discussion.

A national conference entitled Preparing the Drone Workforce professional development workshop series was planned for March in Colonial Williamsburg, VA, and cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Working together with NACCE, the conference has been reimagined as a series of four half-day webinars that will take place through the month of June. The sessions include much of the original content planned for our in-person event in Williamsburg, and brings in additional areas of focus. 

Register today for the Preparing the Drone Workforce professional development four-part webinar series to:

• hear best practices for effective UAS courses/programs of study
• discuss topics relevant to creating and sustaining a drone workforce pipeline
• learn about key UAS educational offerings and industry initiatives
• be among the first to learn about emerging trends in the industry

Registration is $59 per webinar or $200 for the entire series.

Drone industry partners and UAS end-users will spotlight the growing demand for various applications, from package delivery to search and rescue, precision agriculture, real estate, transportation, infrastructure inspection, and many others.

In this webcast, Donna Milgram will show you how two schools boosted female (and male) enrollments in Cybersecurity and IT programs after attending a WomenTech Educators Training, and how you can apply these techniques to boost (and retain) similar enrollments in your programs:

• Fayetteville Technical Community College doubled female enrollment in their Cybersecurity program in only 5 months - from 12 to 22 women. Male enrollment also increased from 58 to 101
• Broward College increased female enrollment in their IT & Computer Science Department (including Cybersecurity) - by 77 women in a year’s time. Male enrollment also increased from 751 to 1009

Join National Cybersecurity Student Association and Kristin Carlson, FocalPoint Business & Executive Coach for Keys to Sustain & Thrive in Your Career webcast. Kristin will discuss what makes successful people successful. How can you differentiate yourself? How can you increase your value to an organization and/or your own business? She will cover key mindset and strategies to be the most productive and effective in your career.

The project is designed to help faculty increase students' interest and engagement in the study and learning of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) principles, practices, and careers through guitar design and building. The Summer Institutes are open to all STEM subject area educators in the 9-12 High school grade levels, community college levels and freshman/sophomore university instruction. Participants will join the existing cohort of STEM Guitar Institute Educators/Fellows around the country teaching STEM content using the guitar as a focus. Fellows help each other with project implementation and contribute to the project’s Applied Learning Community, curriculum and assessment. You will receive a $300 stipend, a completed guitar, a support package at the Institute, and will have the opportunity to apply for a limited number of start-up packages to help launch STEM guitar at your school.
 

Participants in this workshop will learn about the NSF Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program and how to most effectively apply for grant funding. Faculty must propose a specific project to improve an ATE-eligible technical program in a one page proposal. One page proposals will be reviewed from October to February 1st when the first acceptances will be sent. Proposals will be either accepted or sent back for corrections and the website will remain open until the workshop and a waiting list are full. Workshop activities will include presentations; planning and writing sessions with mentors who have had extensive experience with ATE and NSF; and networking with colleagues from similar institutions around the country.

Description: The second course in the CCNA curriculum focuses on switching technologies and router operations that support small-to-medium business networks and includes wireless local area networks (WLANs) and security concepts. Students learn key switching and routing concepts. They can perform basic network configuration and troubleshooting, identify and mitigate LAN security threats, and configure and secure a basic WLAN.

This class will cover some new topics that were not part of the previous CCNA curriculum, so it is recommended even for those people that have prior NetAcad experience.

Prerequisite: Concepts covered in CCNA 1 classes or prior networking experience.

Instructors: Mukila Maitha, Harper College & Rich Schultz, GeoTech Center Associate Director

Participants at this workshop gain hands on experience on teaching with ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Pro, UAVs (drones), and Earth Imagery. Attendees will be introduced to open curriculum development resources (lessons and data) from national and international repositories. Workshop participants will develop an exercise or lesson for use in one of their classes.

This workshop will focus on developing and integrating practical applications of Drone and Geospatial Technology use into curriculum. Ongoing applied research projects will provide data and examples of how drones and geospatial technology can be used to enhance STEM education into subject areas. Various software will be utilized in the processing of digital imagery. 

For more than 25 years, the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program has awarded competitive grants, with an emphasis on two-year colleges, to test innovative ideas for improving STEM technician education in the advanced technology fields that are important to the nation’s economic health and security. Community colleges nationwide, in response to Covid-19, are challenged to develop strategies to successfully deliver hands-on content in an online environment such as through virtual labs, simulations, and augmented and virtual reality.  Join us to learn how ATE grants have been successfully used to create innovative curriculum, technologies, and authentic learning experiences in virtual environments; about the critical value of preparing students with STEM technical skills in a current- and post-pandemic economy; and what you need to do to apply for NSF ATE funding.

Presenters:
Jonathan Beck, Executive Director and PI, National Center for Autonomous Technologies, Northland Community and Technical College, MN
V. Celeste Carter, Lead ATE Program Director, National Science Foundation, VA 
Kevin Cooper, PI, RCNET and Dean of Advanced Technology, Indian River State College, FL
Michele Norgren, Director and PI, VESTA National Center, MO

A national conference entitled Preparing the Drone Workforce professional development workshop series was planned for March in Colonial Williamsburg, VA, and cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Working together with NACCE, the conference has been reimagined as a series of four half-day webinars that will take place through the month of June. The sessions include much of the original content planned for our in-person event in Williamsburg, and brings in additional areas of focus. 

Register today for the Preparing the Drone Workforce professional development four-part webinar series to:

• hear best practices for effective UAS courses/programs of study
• discuss topics relevant to creating and sustaining a drone workforce pipeline
• learn about key UAS educational offerings and industry initiatives
• be among the first to learn about emerging trends in the industry

Registration is $59 per webinar or $200 for the entire series.

Drone industry partners and UAS end-users will spotlight the growing demand for various applications, from package delivery to search and rescue, precision agriculture, real estate, transportation, infrastructure inspection, and many others.

Three leaders from Minnesota State colleges and university system will discuss the opportunities that their initiative, “Minnesota State Workforce Solutions” presents to the manufacturing sector. The discussion will include:

• Resources and training grants that are available to businesses
• com for workforce training
• Unique ways of building side by side customized programs so businesses get exactly what they need when they need it
• Who to call – How to get in touch with us at the system office to help you navigate the 37 campuses in 54 communities across the state
• Specific training and workforce solutions examples of what Hennepin Technical College and Ridgewater College are doing for manufacturers.

Speakers:

Dr. Trent Janezich, Interim Executive Director for Workforce Solutions-Minnesota State System Office
Sam Bowen, Dean of Continuing Education and Customized Training-Ridgewater College
Matt Leaf, Dean of Workforce Education-Hennepin Technical College

The project is designed to help faculty increase students' interest and engagement in the study and learning of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) principles, practices, and careers through guitar design and building. The Summer Institutes are open to all STEM subject area educators in the 9-12 High school grade levels, community college levels and freshman/sophomore university instruction. Participants will join the existing cohort of STEM Guitar Institute Educators/Fellows around the country teaching STEM content using the guitar as a focus. Fellows help each other with project implementation and contribute to the project’s Applied Learning Community, curriculum and assessment. You will receive a $300 stipend, a completed guitar, a support package at the Institute, and will have the opportunity to apply for a limited number of start-up packages to help launch STEM guitar at your school.

Description: The third course in the CCNAv7 curriculum describes the architectures and considerations related to designing, securing, operating, and troubleshooting enterprise networks. This course covers wide area network (WAN) technologies and quality of service (QoS) mechanisms used for secure remote access. ENSA also introduces software-defined networking, virtualization, and automation concepts that support the digitalization of networks. Students gain skills to configure and troubleshoot enterprise networks, and learn to identify and protect against cybersecurity threats. They are introduced to network management tools and learn key concepts of software-defined networking, including controller-based architectures and how application programming interfaces (APIs) enable network automation.

This class will cover some new topics that were not part of the previous CCNA curriculum, so it is recommended even for those people that have prior NetAcad experience.

Prerequisite: Concepts covered in CCNA 2 classes or prior networking experience.

Description: This session will provide an overview of the tools and techniques commonly used for detecting threats to an enterprise infrastructure. Implement strategies for documenting and reporting detected events based on industry standard compliance frameworks. We will use the Security Onion distribution. Tools include Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana (ELK/Elastic Stack), Wazuh, Snort, Zeek, Wireshark, and TCP Dump. On the final day we will be doing a capture the FLAG event in the Cyber range.

Prerequisite: Basic understanding of Linux operating system.

A national conference entitled Preparing the Drone Workforce professional development workshop series was planned for March in Colonial Williamsburg, VA, and cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Working together with NACCE, the conference has been reimagined as a series of four half-day webinars that will take place through the month of June. The sessions include much of the original content planned for our in-person event in Williamsburg, and brings in additional areas of focus. 

Register today for the Preparing the Drone Workforce professional development four-part webinar series to:

• hear best practices for effective UAS courses/programs of study
• discuss topics relevant to creating and sustaining a drone workforce pipeline
• learn about key UAS educational offerings and industry initiatives
• be among the first to learn about emerging trends in the industry

Registration is $59 per webinar or $200 for the entire series.

Drone industry partners and UAS end-users will spotlight the growing demand for various applications, from package delivery to search and rescue, precision agriculture, real estate, transportation, infrastructure inspection, and many others.

At the Institute, you will learn fundamentals of Energy Efficiency and Solar Photovoltaics (PV). During this three day Energy Institute, you will learn energy efficiency and solar photovoltaics, and data analysis. You will get to use tools of the trade to evaluate locations for their solar energy potential, use electric meters, infrared cameras and data loggers to perform an energy audit of a classroom, and explore resources and lesson plans you can take and implement in your school. Finally, you’ll use hands-on classroom lab activities that will enable you to bring energy efficiency, solar energy, and data analysis to life in your classroom.

The DeafTEC Resource Center is partnering with AHEAD to provide a unique professional development opportunity for faculty and disability services personnel on fostering equitable higher education experiences for students with disabilities.

The virtual conference offers 60 hours of professional development presentations and discussions facilitated by content experts. All presentations will be recorded and available to all registrants to watch at your convenience, providing content that can take you through the summer!

Learn how to teach solar principles in effective, engaging ways in classroom! Join the STEM Educator Solar Institute in Madison. At the Institute, you'll use tools of the trade to install and commission a residential size solar photovoltaic array. You’ll review and practice necessary safety measures and electrical principles. Finally, you’ll perform (and take with you) ready to use hands-on classroom lab activities that will enable you to bring solar energy to life in your classroom.

The AACC Presidents Academy Summer Institute (PASI) is an annual professional development program for CEOs and presidents of member community colleges, providing intensive focus on current challenges, emerging trends, and opportunities unique to that position.

The three-day institute focuses on issues of critical importance to success in the role of the community college president, providing a mix of content experts and interaction around related case studies that result in the development/acquisition of ready-to-use skill sets that participants can apply back at their respective campuses. The institute also provides opportunities for newer presidents to develop mentor-mentee relationships with more seasoned presidents, focusing on immediate challenges and opportunities that these presidents are facing on their campuses.