2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This project, funded by the National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education (NSF ATE) program, provides a mentoring program for community colleges teams submitting NSF ATE proposals. The project aligns with the NSF ATE program objective to provide leadership opportunities for faculty at two-year institutions and supports the national priority of educating the skilled technical workforce for the industries that keep the United States globally competitive. The key outcome of this project is an increase in the number of competitive NSF ATE proposals submitted by community college faculty.

Specific activities of the project include virtual mentoring and webinars as well as a virtual 2.5-day workshop where two-year faculty who are teaching technician education learn the strategies and NSF requirements for writing and submitting competitive proposals. Although this project was developed with an in-person workshop as one of its components, it was modified to a virtual workshop during the pandemic. Following the pandemic, the project leadership team decided to keep the workshop in a virtual format to accommodate potential participants who may face barriers to travel. Through these activities, participants learn strategies for institutional investment in pursuit of NSF ATE program grant funding and increase project team expertise in the NSF ATE proposal writing process. Participants also learn to address many of challenges faced by community college faculty in preparing and submitting NSF grant proposals. For community colleges awarded NSF ATE grants, this project results in improved student access to education and acquisition of skills needed to enter the workforce as STEM graduates whose contributions will advance the nation’s economic goals for meeting emerging workforce needs.

The project has served four annual cohorts from 2021 – 2024 with a total of 56 teams participating. Out of those teams, 38 submitted proposals. In 2024 a pre-application mentoring component was added to the project. Teams interested in applying to the 2024 cohort were able to work with a mentor for up to ten hours to develop a one-page project summary demonstrating workforce needs that would justify funding for the project and industry partnerships that have been established. Eight teams participated in pre-application mentoring, six of those teams applied to the regular cohort, and four of those teams submitted NSF ATE proposals.