Advanced Technological Education .

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.

In This Issue

Featured Resources in Engineering Technologies - General Engineering

From National Center for Supply Chain Automation:

How Does My Military Training Align with Supply Chain Automation

atecentral.net/downloads/4438/Military+Skills+Crosswalk.pdf

This one-page document, provided by the National Center for Supply Chain Automation, is a crosswalk intended to help a user determine how specific military training aligns with supply chain automation. For four military branches, the crosswalk lists occupational specialties alongside supply chain automation skills. Military occupational specialties include mechanical maintenance, aviation electrician's mate, main battle tank repairer/technician, aerospace ground equipment electrician/refrigeration mechanic, and many more.

From DeafTEC: Technological Education Center for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students:

Math Videos Captioned and Signed in ASL: Factoring Polynomials (Intro to Factoring)

www.deaftec.org/resources/math/self-instruction/intro-factoring

This is one video in the series of lessons on math provided by DeafTEC. Gary Blatto-Vallee, a math and science instructor at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, guides viewers through a variety of mathematical exercises in this DeafTEC video series. All lessons are fully captioned, signed in ASL, and voiced. In this 13:15 video, Blatto-Vallee uses an electronic whiteboard to introduce the concept of factoring polynomials.

From Support Center for Microsystems Education (SCME):

Safety Data Sheets Learning Module

scme-support.org/index.php/safety-for-microsystems-fabrications/safety-data-sheets

This module, provided by Support Center for Microsystems Education (SCME), provides content and activities that allow the participants to locate safety data sheets, extract information, and compare the potential hazards of two or more chemicals.

The module is divided into three sections: Instructors, Participants, and Presentations. The following documents are included: Knowledge probe, KOH SDS activity assessment, Internet research activity, KOH SDS activity, Final assessment, and Safety data sheet presentation slides. Visitors are encouraged to create an account and login in order to access the full set of resources.

Community Connection

ATE Central Interviews Farra Trompeter, Vice President of Big Duck

Part of our focus at ATE Central is to create pathways to information and experts that can support and strengthen the work of ATE grantees. ATE Central recently sat down with Farra Trompeter, VP of Big Duck, a communications firm that works exclusively with nonprofits based in Brooklyn NY, to discuss how branding and marketing can enhance the work of projects and centers.

ATE Central: Please tell us a little bit about Big Duck and your role there.

Farra Trompeter: Big Duck develops the voices of determined nonprofits by creating strong brands, campaigns, and teams. We specialize in working with nonprofits experiencing significant growth and change. I've been a member of Big Duck's team since 2007. As Vice President, I guide organizations through major brand overhauls, fundraising campaigns, and much more. I also speak around the country, training nonprofit professionals on marketing, online fundraising, and donor engagement. You can learn more about me on Big Duck's website and connect directly via Twitter via @Farra.

ATE Central: What exactly is branding and why should ATE grantees be concerned about branding their project/center work?

Trompeter: A brand is your project or center's voice. It's what your audiences hear, see, experience, and feel--and the impression that is formed as a result of their experiences with you. Your voice may be disjointed, murky, and barely louder than a whisper. Or your voice can ring out, differentiate, and reverberate.

A strong brand isn't just a temporary fix or a website update. It's built for the long haul, often to embody a new strategic plan, the vision of a new leader, or other seismic shifts. Rebranding means expressing that vision deeply and authentically, internally and externally.

For a project or center, a strong brand can help you reach and engage with students, faculty, program partners, and other key audiences. It can also help you build relationships with funders and donors for programmatic sustainability.

ATE Central: You use the word marketing - lots of people in the grant-funded world use outreach - is there a difference?

Trompeter: It really depends on the way you define each term. I often think of outreach as the tangible activities you use to get the word out (e.g. exhibiting at a fair, placing an ad on Facebook), where marketing is the strategy you use to drive those efforts (e.g. raising the project or center's visibility among specific audiences or using social media to reach likely candidates). Both matter so I'd go with whatever terminology works best and just be sure there's strategy behind your tactics and vice versa.

ATE Central: How can a PI with no background in marketing come up with a basic marketing (or outreach) plan - what are some first steps?

Trompeter: The first steps are clarifying and prioritizing your goals and then setting SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) objectives to track your progress toward each one. Then you'll want to determine who your target audiences should be, considering who are the most important people to know your project or center and what it offers, and then developing personas or profiles that highlight who they are and what they want/need to hear in order to engage with you.

ATE Central: Tell us a little more about the two webinars you'll be doing in January and February with ATE Central.

Trompeter: Sure. Each webinar will be one-hour focused on theory and tactics you can put in place to help your project or center. The first webinar will be on January 29, at 1pm ET, all about crafting mission statements and messaging to engage your community. The second webinar will be on February 26, at 1pm ET, and will focus on how to set strategies and tactics to guide your outreach efforts and will include some content related to social media.

To read more about these upcoming webinars and to enroll, visit our webinar page.

Read the full interview with Farra and get access to great resources from Big Duck by checking out December's ATE Impacts Blog post.

ATE Success Tips: Outreach

Branding is important way to help gain recognition for your project or center and the valuable work you do. You can learn more about branding through this month's Community Connection and December's ATE Impacts Blog post. It can be difficult, however, to know how to implement specific outreach strategies in order to increase awareness of your brand, where to begin, and how to connect with people in your community. Below are some additional ideas to explore when thinking about how to make those connections.

  • Maintain a community presence - in person and online. Being active in your online community with a robust social media presence can definitely increase the brand recognition of your project or center - check out the ATE Social Media Directory to link to and follow others in the community. Another great avenue to increasing your community presence is attending industry-related or regional conferences. The biggest conference in the ATE community is the ATE PI Conference held every October - in addition to this conference, look into attending or presenting at related conferences. HI-TEC (High Impact Technology Exchange Conference), NISOD (National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development), and the AACC (American Association of Community Colleges) Annual Convention are all excellent avenues for networking and increasing brand awareness for your project or center. Do some additional research in your area or region for other conferences you could attend, which would increase recognition of your project or center on a more local scale. You can check out the ATE Central Events calendar for more ideas too.
  • Guest blogging. Do you have any industry partners you work with? If so, consider being a guest blogger or co-hosting an event with that partner. This will strengthen your partnership, in addition to possibly leading to new connections and providing the ATE community with new and useful resources to work with. Keep in mind that being a guest blogger or a guest host will also provide you with new material to promote on your social media sites.

For more ideas on how to implement outreach strategies, check out the ATE Central Outreach Kit, and read ATE Central's full interview with Farra Trompeter, VP at Big Duck.

Did You Know?

The average in-state tuition and fees at community colleges for 2018-19 is $3,660, which is the lowest cost among all higher education sectors. Read the full pdf published by the American Association of Community Colleges.

Select STEM Education Resources

A few online STEM resources from outside of ATE, that you may find of interest:

Northwest Association for Biomedical Research: Teacher Center

www.nwabr.org/teacher-center

Teachers of STEM and STEM-adjacent subjects may want to check out this collection of educator resources from the Northwest Association for Biomedical Research (NWABR). Visitors to NWABR's Teacher Center will find an archive of fully developed curricula, lessons, rubrics, and other materials on topics relevant to biomedical science. These include fundamentals such as Bioethics 101, which was compiled from NWABR's comprehensive Ethics Primer containing strategies for incorporating ethics into classroom discussions, as well as curricula on specific topics like stem cell research, HIV vaccines, and bioinformatics. The full curricula are available as PDFs and individual lessons often include PowerPoint slides and supplementary material. While most of these resources were developed with middle and high school students in mind, instructors of a variety of grade levels may find NWABR's offerings helpful. Based in Seattle, NWABR is a regional organization that aspires "to promote the public's trust in biomedical research and its ethical conduct" through education and dialogue.

Science Friday: Explosion Math!

www.sciencefriday.com/educational-resources/explosion-math

Both math and earth science educators may be interested in Explosion Math, a lesson plan provided by Science Friday's Educator Collaborative. In this standards-aligned lesson, which was written for middle and high school students, learners are challenged "to answer the age-old question of who would win between an Olympic sprinter, tortoise, car, you, and a volcano." Here, students use the slope-intercept form to calculate how much of a head start each subject would need to escape from two different volcanoes, Kilauea in Hawai'i and Fuego in Guatemala, both of which erupted in 2018. Along the way, students learn about (or review) the differences between shield and stratovolcanoes and their respective types of flows and reflect on the real-world implications of this scenario. This lesson is designed to take one to two hours to complete and includes multiple illustrative images and GIFs, as well as downloadable handouts and slides. Explosion Math was written by Brian Soash, Science Friday's Educator Community Leader and a former middle school math and science teacher.

African Education Research Database

essa-africa.org/AERD

Begun in 2017 and launched in June 2018, the African Education Research Database (AERD) is "a curated collection of research undertaken in the past decade by scholars based in sub-Saharan Africa." This database, which seeks "to raise the visibility of African research" and lower barriers to accessing that research, is a collaborative initiative between the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre at the University of Cambridge and Education Sub Saharan Africa (ESSA). Here, readers will find more than 2,200 items (as of this writing) of "social science research with implications for educational policy and practice," including peer-reviewed articles, doctoral dissertations, book chapters, and working papers, all produced since 2007, and the database is regularly updated with new material. Visitors can search and filter AERD by keyword, country, and research methods, and there is also an interactive map showing the number of studies available from each country. While the majority of its contents are in English, the AERD also contains some research in French and Portuguese.

Do you have some great STEM resources you'd like to share with ATE Central? Email us with your ideas at [email protected].

ATE Events

Upcoming Events
Gen Evidenced-based Strategies for Implementing Critical Learner Reflection Online
– Eng 2019 FCPN Annual Symposium Jensen Beach, FL
Gen Active Learning Using Free Polling Software Online
Gen The Educators Guide to the Student Engagement/Motivation Galaxy! Beaumont, TX
– Info Geo Week 2019 Denver, CO
Gen Teaching With Your Mouth Shut: Keeping Students Active, Attentive, and Engaged! Wesson, MS
Gen Tell a good story: Crafting mission statements and messages for your ATE project or center Online
– Gen AACC - Workforce Development Institute San Diego, CA
Gen Three Common Evaluation Fails and How to Prevent Them Online
Nano Neural Interfaces: Nanoscience and Materials Technology Online
– Eng Photonics West 2019 San Francisco, CA
Gen What’s the Secret to Creating Classroom Discussions That Work? Henderson, NC
Gen Teaching Critical Thinking Webinar Brownsville, TX
Gen Capture My Heart, Educate My Soul Winterville, NC
Gen Emotional Intelligence, Efficacy, and Success Webinar Lynnwood, WA
Gen Teaching Critical Thinking Webinar Bossier City,, LA
– Gen Innovations Conference Chandler, AZ
– Info GIS/CAMA Technologies Conference Portland, OR
Gen So many choices, so little time: Setting strategies to guide your tactics Online
– Ag/Env 2019 Wine Chemistry Workshop Miami, FL
Gen Flipped Learning: Pathway to Student Success Sioux City, IA
Gen What’s the Secret to Creating Classroom Discussions That Work? Lexington, KY
Gen Strategies for Student Learning and Success: Relational Teaching and Classroom Community Building Pittsburgh, PA
– Eng Engineering Technology Forum Sarasota, FL
Gen Teaching Critical Thinking Workshop Clinton Township, MI

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 submit them online.

To add a continuously-updated list of ATE and STEM education events to your website, use the ATE Event Widget.

News & Reminders

New educational opportunities available due to major collaboration between NISOD and ACUE

An exciting partnership has formed between the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD) and the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE). Through this collaboration, community and technical college faculty will have the opportunity to earn credit toward ACUE's Certificate in Effective College Instruction through new online and face-to-face "seminars" offered jointly by NISOD and ACUE.

Seminars are credit bearing and those who participate in the courses will be recognized at the annual NISOD conference. Those who are interested in taking seminars through this collaboration can expect to see more information in the coming weeks.

For more information, view NISOD's press release about the partnership.

Would you like copies of the ATE Impacts book?

Book orders and general inquiries about ATE Impacts 2018-2019: Twenty-Five Years of Advancing Technician Education can be emailed to [email protected].

Archiving your deliverables with ATE Central is now easier than ever!

Upload your curriculum, professional development materials, or other deliverables created with ATE funding directly to the ATE Central resource portal via the new archive submission form.

Can CWIS software help support your project goals?

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. The latest version (CWIS 4.1.1) was released on and is available for download on the Scout site. Please email [email protected] if you have any questions or would like a quick tour of its features!

Follow ATE Central on Facebook and Twitter to keep up with all things new at ATE Central and in the ATE Community as well as in the world of STEM Education.


To unsubscribe to the ATE Central Connection, please reply to this e-mail with "unsubscribe" in the subject field or body of the e-mail, or use your ATE Central account to unsubscribe at atecentral.net. For any other subscription questions, please e-mail [email protected].