Mentor-Connect now offers mentoring to community college faculty who have not had Advanced Technological Education (ATE) grants, even if their college has previously had awards from this National Science Foundation (NSF) program.
The program pairs faculty with mentors to help them prepare their applications for ATE grants. Applications for Mentor-Connect’s new cohort are due November 10.
During the past decade, Mentor-Connect has helped 234 community college teams prepare competitive proposals to the track for Small Projects for Institutions New to the ATE program.
“Mentor-Connect is the reason American Samoa Community College was able to be awarded the first ATE NSF grant ever. It was the persistence of our mentors who advised us all along the way as we were writing our proposal that eventually was submitted, reviewed, accepted and awarded. We are so indebted to Mentor-Connect,” said Shirley DeLa Rosa, program director in the Teacher Education Department at the college in Pago Pago in the U.S. territory. DeLa Rosa is the principal investigator of the project “Adopting the STEM Guitar Curriculum to Prepare Students in American Samoa for Technician Education (NSF Award 2100418).”
“I promote Mentor-Connect everywhere I go,” said Ken Mays, who traveled around the country this summer making presentations as the principal investigator of the project “NEVTEX Next” (NSF Award #2301095) at Central Oregon Community College. This is the third ATE grant he has led since he received Mentor-Connect mentoring in 2013 to prepare his first ATE grant proposal.
Webinar on September 27
This year, Mentor-Connect added assistance to faculty who have previously not had ATE grants that work at colleges with recent ATE grants. Because their colleges have had ATE grants, these educators are guiding in submitting proposals to the ATE Projects track.
Community college educators interested in Mentor-Connect mentor should register for Mentor-Connect’s September 27 webinar. It begins at 2 p.m. EST and will provide an overview of the ATE program and details about the mentoring that Mentor-Connect provides to faculty over nine months as they prepare ATE grant proposals. The 90-minute webinar will be recorded to view later, too.
Mentor-Connect, an ATE project that is a partnership between the South Carolina Advanced Technological Education Center at Florence-Darlington Technical College and the American Association of Community Colleges.
