Mentor-Connect: Leadership Development and Outreach for ATE-2

Florence-Darlington Technical College, Florence SC

Investigators

Abstract

Advanced technological education programs in community colleges are facing the same challenges created by retirements and the need for knowledge transfer and leadership development as their business and industry partners. The Mentor-Connect project addresses these challenges by having current and experienced project leaders in the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Program serve as mentors and develop systematic mentoring services for new and prospective ATE grantees to develop the next generation of leaders in advanced technological education and achieve broader impacts for the National Science Foundation (NSF) ATE program. Ultimately, advanced technological education programs and the industries they partner with will be impacted and improved across the United States. Florence-Darlington Technical College, in partnership with the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), will create, implement, and evaluate a regenerative mentoring system for leadership development and knowledge transfer designed to broaden the impact of the ATE Program. The project will be guided by personnel involved with the award-winning IBM Corporation Global Mentoring Program, and it will leverage talent within the ATE project community to meet a common and growing challenge: knowledge transfer to prepare the next generation of STEM faculty leaders. Additionally, the project will support: 1) an increase in engagement with and competitive proposals from colleges and populations underrepresented in the ATE program, 2) technical assistance and online resources for use both by mentors and prospective and current Principal Investigators (PIs), 3) expansion and broader utilization of existing ATE resources, 4) engagement of successful ATE PIs as mentors, and 5) an 8-year, longitudinal study of this mentoring system. In addition to serving as a model for leadership development and knowledge transfer adaptable for use within community colleges and for other NSF programs, the project will evaluate and disseminate its findings to broad audiences, and in so doing, provide resources to guide prospective grantees, and effectively engage two-year colleges and STEM faculty who are underrepresented geographically and demographically in the ATE Program, as they develop future talent for STEM technician education across the US.