Mentor Up: Supporting Preparation of Competitive Proposals to Improve Education of the Skilled Technical Workforce

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According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the United States has 1,252 two-year institutions of higher education. However, each year only about 200 of these institutions submit proposals to the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program, which support education of the skilled technical workforce. As a result, a large pool of potential institutions and faculty who could benefit from the ATE program are not submitting proposals. This project will support a mentoring program to guide prospective principal investigators in crafting and submitting a proposal to the ATE program. This project aligns with the ATE program objective to provide leadership opportunities for faculty at two-year institutions. It will also support the national priority of educating the skilled technical workforce for the industries that keep the United States globally competitive.The project will leverage the promising practices from other NSF awards that focus on mentoring and leadership development activities. Each year of the award, the project team will recruit teams from 16 community and technical colleges, with the team members including two technician-education faculty from the institution, together with a grant writer, administrator, or other key contributor from the institution. Specific activities will include virtual mentoring and webinars as well as an in-person 2.5-day workshop where two-year faculty who are teaching technician education will learn the strategies and NSF requirements for writing and submitting competitive proposals. Faculty from all disciplines applicable to advanced technological education will be considered for participation. The intention is that each two-year college team will submit at least one ATE proposal. The project will also provide professional development for mentors-in-training, including newly awarded ATE Principal Investigators who will become the next generation of ATE leaders. This project will help participants address many of challenges faced by community college faculty in preparing and submitting NSF grant proposals, often due to a lack institutional experience and resources to support efforts to secure NSF awards. At the workshop and after, participants will be able to engage with their institution’s administration or other key personnel, thereby increasing the number of community colleges with knowledge of the NSF and its ATE program. In this way, project participants will bring knowledge and skills to their campuses that can help to catalyze and implement institutional change. The project will target a diverse group of urban, suburban, and rural institutions and provide opportunities for participation of faculty and students who are typically underrepresented in technician programs, such as minority populations and women. This project is funded by the Advanced Technological Education program that focuses on the education of technicians for the advanced-technology fields that drive the nation's economy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.