After years of working in the background to build the capacity of two-year college STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) faculty and
the skills of technicians, the Advanced Technological Education(ATE) program is gaining recognition as a source of STEM workforce expertise.
ATE’s e ffective mentoring of STEM educators and its history of productive collaborations have provided the opening for these new ventures.
Five ATE centers are currently providing technical assistance to colleges that haveTrade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grants. This U.S. Department of Labor program emulates aspects of the smaller and older ATE program funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
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For Jennifer Jackowski, presenting the results of her algae-to-biofuel experiments at the 2007 Advanced Technological Education (ATE) 
Principal Investigators Conference was one a several experiences that led to her completing a doctorate in environmental chemistry and technology earlier this year.
A high school drop-out, Jackowski credits Madison Area Technical College (MATC) and faculty mentors there and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) with helping her discover the joys of an academic science career. She is in her fourth year of teaching chemistry full time at MATC and coordinating the college’s engineering transfer program that helps 40 to 50 students matriculate to baccalaureate programs each year.
Her career path is not one that she or anyone else would have predicted when she dropped out of high school and moved out of her family’s home at 17. Supporting herself and having fun were what mattered to her as a teenager.
“School wasn’t my priority,” she said, adding that teachers told her she was smart. “I just didn’t hear it.”
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The 60 students selected to attend the 2015 Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Principal Investigators Conference reflect the diversity of 
community college populations, and their projects exemplify the variety of advanced technology educational opportunities the National Science Foundation(NSF) program supports.
Consider just three of the student exhibits that were featured during a showcase session last month during the three-day conference in Washington, D.C.
Austin HeavyRunner, a construction technology student whose backyard borders Glacier National Park, explained his work on a microhydroelectric generator. He and other students at Blackfeet Community College experimented with renewable energy equipment they created from repurposed materials. Their activities were part of the 2015 Summer Energy Technology Practicum that Missoula College-University of Montana offered at the tribal college in Browning, Mont.
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