ADVANCED TECHNOLOGICAL EDUCATION ·
MAY 2011
Welcome to the ATE Central Connection! Published the first Monday of each month, the ATE Central Connection is meant to disseminate information to and about ATE centers and projects, providing you with up-to-date ATE news, events, reminders, as well as highlighting new centers, projects, and resources. In addition, we will also highlight an educational topic with complementary resources found within ATE Central to help illustrate how ATE resources can be used in the classroom.
We want the ATE Central Connection to be a valuable tool; please e-mail [email protected] with any suggestions about how to make the ATE Central Connection more useful for you or to suggest any information you would like to see in an upcoming issue.
For more events please visit the ATE Central Events page or if you have any upcoming events that you would like posted on ATE Central or in the ATE Central Connection please send them to [email protected].
This ATE professional development project is a collaboration between STEM faculty teams from Butler County Community College (Butler, PA), Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN), Sinclair Community College (Dayton, OH), Ventura College (Ventura, CA), College of the Redwoods (Eureka, CA), as well as high school STEM faculty in each of the states involved. Faculty teams at the respective locations are working together to design, build, and analyze solid body electric guitars as a means of learning applied concepts of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and as a means of understanding product lifecycle management. This experience is providing teachers and students an accurate simulation of the collaborative design and rapid manufacturing processes routinely used in business and industry. Over 150 STEM faculty members from high schools and community colleges are participating in an intense five-day Summer Professional Development Program and are having extensive academic year follow-up activities. The teacher participants are using these processes and simulations in their classrooms to enhance the STEM laboratory learning experience. Nearly 5000 students are learning about cross-disciplinary STEM problem solving that is becoming increasingly important for new design technicians to experience. On the site, visitors can find curriculum materials including classroom tools and information on guitar fabrication. There are also details of upcoming workshops and professional development opportunities. In the Storefront section, visitors can learn about how to purchase a guitar kit.
Here is a sample of the valuable resources in ATE Central that focus on Engineering:
From NetWorks:
Community colleges play an important role in starting students on the road to engineering careers, but students often face obstacles in transferring to four-year educational institutions to continue their education. Enhancing the Community College Pathway to Engineering Careers, a new book from the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council, discusses ways to improve the transfer experience for students at community colleges and offers strategies to enhance partnerships between those colleges and four-year engineering schools to help students transfer more smoothly. In particular, the book focuses on challenges and opportunities for improving transfer between community colleges and four-year educational institutions, recruitment and retention of students interested in engineering, the curricular content and quality of engineering programs, opportunities for community colleges to increase diversity in the engineering workforce, and a review of sources of information on community college and transfer students. It includes a number of current policies, practices, and programs involving community college four-year institution partnerships. You can read this book online for free or order a copy from the website.
These interactive learning objects, created by instructors from Fox Valley Technical College and other colleges in the Wisconsin Technical College program, focus on concepts that cover a broad-based electromechanical program. Here visitors will find learning objects in Hydraulics with over 25 lessons in Actuators, Relief Valves, Basic Concepts, and Directional Control Valves.
From the Environmental & Energy Resources Library (eERL):
From the University of Strathclyde's Engineering Department, this "self-learning courseware is maintained by ESRU and used within taught programs as part of our undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing professional development provisions." This course is 16110 Energy and Environment: Introduction to Solar Energy and it includes an introduction to solar energy, an introduction to photovoltaics, and a solar energy assignment.
The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) is pleased to announce a national grant competition for the MentorLinks: Advancing Technological Education program, developed with the support of the National Science Foundation. MentorLinks is designed for community colleges seeking to improve technician education programs in the science, technology, engineering, or mathematics fields. Colleges should be interested in working with an experienced community college mentor who has successfully planned and implemented a major change in a high-technology program. MentorLinks colleges will receive $20,000 for the two-year grant period with primary emphasis on opportunities for technical assistance and professional development as part of the mentoring relationship. The grant period runs from October 1, 2011 – October 31, 2013. The deadline to apply is June 23, 2011. For more information, please see http://www.aacc.nche.edu/mentorlinks
ATEEC is looking for environmental and energy specialists to vet (review) materials for the electronic Environmental and Energy Resources Library. If you are interested in participating please contact Lora at [email protected].
CWIS is open source software, created with NSF funding, that can help your project or center showcase resources online. It's free and very easy to use — click here to check out a few of the sites running CWIS. We'd be happy to provide you with more information about CWIS and give you a quick tour of its features — please e-mail [email protected] to get started!
For information about ATE Central and how your project or center can take part and benefit from ATE Central's portal and services you may want to download the ATE Central Handbook at http://atecentral.net/handbook.
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ATE Central Connection is published by Internet Scout via support from the National Science Foundation under grant number 0941067. |  |