Potential Outreach Paths

In addition to traditional and social media outlets, there are many publicity opportunities within the ATE community, NSF, and beyond. Here's a quick guide:

ATE Central

ATE Central was created as a place to help educators, students, and the general public discover all that the ATE program has to offer. Through the online portal, visitors can access the full range of available ATE resources. In addition, ATE Central aggregates information about the ATE centers and projects, which helps educators, administrators, and others connect to one another and the ATE program. ATE Central also serves as a central communication and support point for all of those involved in ATE centers and projects, offering a number of features to help with outreach and dissemination including:

  • An events page where your organization can post any event it's producing for broadcast to a larger community.
  • ATE Central Connection (ACC), a monthly newsletter that highlights projects and centers, resources, events, and ATE news and updates.
  • The ATE Central home page, featuring ATE news, announcements, and updates along with new resources.

Please e-mail [email protected] to ensure that your project or center (and its resources) is represented.

Teaching Technicians

Teaching Technicians is a destination for information on faculty development for technician educators. Teaching Technician's mission is two-fold: (1) to make it easy for technician educators to learn about and take advantage of exemplary professional development opportunities provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) ATE grantees and others, and (2) to increase participation in faculty development by providing NSF ATE grantees a central place to announce their events that will alert instructors of opportunities. Registration on the Teaching Technicians website is free and allows you to:

  • Post or edit any development event that you're hosting.
  • Create an event search that allows you to define the type, time, and location of any professional event that you may be interested in.
  • Request that Teaching Technicians e-mail your event search results to you.

Teaching Technicians is a simple, free, and popular path to disseminate your project or center's development events. For more questions, e-mail: [email protected].

ATE Centers

The ATE Centers of the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education program lead dynamic, productive partnerships among industry, community colleges, and other education sectors. The mission of the ATE centers is to provide models and leadership and act as clearinghouses for educational materials and methods. The centers are meant to be cooperative efforts, and in order to fulfill their mission, ATE centers mentor new PIs and projects within the same and related technological fields. Centers also facilitate "broad outreach, community-building, and leadership development among educational institutions, employers, professional and trade associations, educators, and practicing technicians leading to high visibility and support at the collaborating educational institutions."

ATE centers are wonderful resources for those looking for outreach and dissemination paths related to specific technological area. The centers are there to help you in your efforts, so do not hesitate to take advantage of their expertise, wide audience, and resources. For more information, e-mail: [email protected].

Advanced Technological Education Television (ATETV)

The ATETV project aims to show how ATE centers and projects are relevant to the modern workplace and help attract students to these growing fields. ATETV produces multi-disciplinary web-based television episodes that combine the power of video and the Internet to link education, government, and industry by providing a window into careers and workplace skills. ATETV features weekly episodes that broadcast via the web. Each episode is designed to engage prospective and current technicians with the real worlds of technology and industry. ATETV can help you immediately by providing you with applicable videos for any outreach you'd like to conduct. Search through their comprehensive video library to find short videos that may work for you. In addition, if you have an ATE story you'd like to share, you can submit a post to the ATETV blog (via [email protected]) and share your story and hard work with their audience. For more information, e-mail: [email protected]

National Science Foundation (NSF)

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense; and for other purposes." They have an annual budget of almost $7 billion, and are the primary source for almost 20 percent of all federally supported basic research conducted by America's colleges and universities. The NSF requires that grantees demonstrate broader impacts and they provide access to a number of their in-house outreach outlets in order to help their grantees with this task. The best route for ATE projects and centers to share their news directly with NSF is to develop "Behind the Scenes" pieces for LiveScience, a science news website that has partnered with the NSF. As you develop your piece, it is a good idea to talk to your program officer for feedback and ideas and look at previous ATE examples (see below). Once a piece is shared as a LiveScience story, it is then generally repackaged as part of the Discoveries series. These stories are later repurposed for the U.S. News & World Report's science section.

Here's a sample piece developed for LiveScience:
Engineering Students Build Underwater Bot (9/4/2009)

Here are two samples from NSF's Discoveries:

  • The Molecular Workbench Wins SPORE Award (8/4/11)
  • Weld-Ed Sparks Training and Development for Welding Students and Educators (8/1/11)

Here's a list of ATE stories that have appeared since December 2010 as Discoveries at nsf.gov and in U.S. News and World Report:

  • Transforming Agriculture for Future Generations (8/17/11)
  • Blending Science Knowledge with Ancient Traditions (7/7/11)
  • Promoting Sustainable Agriculture (6/21/11)
  • Geospatial Technology as a Core Tool (5/11/2011)

Tip: The NSF recommends using the Advancing Science, Serving Society (AAAS) tools for communicating your science piece.

Once you and your program officer are happy with your article, please contact: V. Celeste Carter, Lead Program Director, telephone: (703) 292-4651, e-mail: [email protected]

For additional communications resources, click here.