“The programs are great,” said Albert Schwabenbauer, chairman of the advisory committee for the Western Michigan University researchers who evaluate the ATE program. Schwabenbauer considers the $45 million Congress has allocated for ATE in the 2005 fiscal year a “small amount of money” for “a huge impact” on millions of American technicians. A former senior executive with Sikorsky Aircraft (part of United Technologies), Schwabenbauer compared ATE’s funding with the $100 million United Technologies Corporation spends each year to support the educational activities of 80,000 employees.
“seed money” that ATE grants provide makes it possible for community colleges to try ideas they could not otherwise afford. For instance, the use of personal computer clusters, rather than supercomputers, for complex functions was just moving out of the experimental stage when Maui Community College in Kahului, HI, sought a grant for what became the National Center of Excellence for High Performance Computing Technology (NCEHPCT). The Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center used part of its grant to start national and regional competitions for underwater Remotely Operated Vehicles to raise students’ awareness of new marine occupations. The success of the competitions and the quality of the MATE Center’s industry-based marine curricula, prompted two of the nation’s leading oceanographic and science research institutions to seek partnerships with it.
In most instances the collaborative relationships the ATE Centers generate also attract a cascade of financial support and in-kind contributions that have a multiplier effect. The local affiliates of the National Aerospace Technical Advisory Committee, which includes The Boeing Company, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Jacobs Sverdrup Corporation, Wylie Laboratories, NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the U.S. Air Force, contributed funding, equipment, subject matter experts, and technology to the National Aerospace Technical Education Center (SpaceTEC). The National Center for Agriscience & Technology Education (AgrowKnowledge) received scholarship funds from Pioneer Hi-Breed International, Inc., and new equipment from Deere and Company, and Rockwell Collins, Inc.
Without the ATE grants, Schwabenbauer points out that community colleges’ technical education programs would be left to seek assistance from cash-strapped states. “We wouldn’t get national models,” he said. Thanks to the significant financial support the grants provide, the South Carolina Advanced Technological Education Center (SC ATE) was able to develop its Engineering Technology Core curriculum. It engages diverse learners and has applications for other technical and academic courses. The IT Skill Standards developed by the National Workforce Center for Emerging Technologies (NWCET) have a wide audience beyond information technology educators. They are the pattern other fields now follow when aligning curricula
with the work technicians do.
B. Jean Floten, the president of Bellevue Community College in Bellevue, WA, where NWCET is located, said that with its ATE grants, “The college has raised its collective ambitions for excellence.” The same can be said of ATE Centers and Projects nationally: they raise the collective ambitions for excellence of community colleges and among the technicians they educate.
