MentorConnect Builds STEM Leaders Support
Madeline writes feature and news stories for a variety of print an e-publications.
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Feature Articles
From MentorLinks mentee to STEM center chief
Vincent A. DiNoto, Jr., uses the mentoring techniques he learned as a mentee in the MentorLinks program to now serve as a mentor for both
MentorLinks and Mentor-Connect and the leader of the National Geospatial Technologies Center of Excellence(GeoTech Center).
In July, DiNoto received the Innovative Program Award at the High Impact Technology Exchange (HI-TEC) Conference for GeoTech Center’s community of practice, which connects two-year college educators — who are often the only geospatial technology instructors at their institutions — with employers and geospatial instructors at other colleges.
“Geotech is such a rapidly changing field that to look at just what educational peers are doing is not enough,” DiNoto said.
Read Full Article ›Pumped up for mechatronics
Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from an article on ATE@20, a blog the spotlights stories pertaining to the federally funded Advanced Technological Education
program, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary. It is reprinted with permission.
Daniel Horine, principal investigator of two National Science FoundationAdvanced Technological Education(ATE) project grants, sees the high demand for mechatronics technicians, who have a combination of mechanical, electrical and computer skills, as evidence of their career opportunities and their importance to manufacturers whose output influences the nation’s economic health.
“Mechatronics is thinking about the end in mind and [about] how we are going to integrate these systems from the beginning … I want mechatronics and the integrated approach to be a way of teaching, and break down the silos and barriers, so that we are setting up our students for success,” Horine said.
Read Full Article ›MentorLinks helps rural college open IT opportunities
Northeast Community College in Nebraska really needed to boost its information technology (IT) program, according to Kris Coan, an IT instructor at the college. Participating in MentorLinks provided some of the funding and expertise to do that.
During its time in MentorLinks, Northeast implemented a recruitment-and-retention plan for its IT program; developed partnerships with other higher education institutions; and used a cloud-based service to deliver IT instruction to secondary schools in its 20-county service area. The new instructional technology allows the faculty member who teaches from Northeast to interact in real-time with students in their high school computer labs and to control students’ desktops from the college.
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