This article appeared in the July 27, 2009 electronic version of the Chronicle of Higher Education and was written by Diane Jones.

This article gives a strong agreement for the ATE program as one of the guiding forces that helps community colleges continue to innovate in the area of technology education. I met the Honorable Diane Jones when she was a program officer at the NSF.

In May 2008, the board of directors of The Washington Campus, a consortium of 16 major university business schools committed to educating graduate business students and corporate executives on the decision-making process of the U.S. government, named her to serve as the organization’s next president and CEO. 

Prior to joining The Washington Campus, Diane served as the Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education.

In that position, she served as the principal policy advisor to the secretary on all Departmental matters related to postsecondary education, including higher education accreditation and Federal student financial aid programs, and her office administered over 50 grant programs that support higher education nationwide. 

 

Her experience and national standing strengthens her arguments in support of the ATE program. Below is a few paragraphs excerpt.      

   

The ATE program, which has existed since the 1980s, is one of the only Federal science and mathematics education programs that has been able to demonstrate positive results, despite the fact that its annual budget represents only around $50-million of the $3.2-billion federal investment in K-graduate science and mathematics education. Grants made through the ATE program have supported strong community-college degree and certificate programs that have, in turn, fostered growth and development of key industries, such as the biotechnology industry, the semiconductor industry, the marine and geosciences industry, and even the agricultural industry, in regions served by these programs. It seems only natural that the ATE program should be expanded to support the burgeoning alternative-energy industry and to help train and retrain individuals who wish to pursue new careers in this field.

Now for all of the naysayers out there who criticize technology education programs as preparing students for dead-ended jobs, or yesterday’s careers, I’d like to say that ATE-funded programs have shown their ability to constantly evolve and remain current in supporting the contemporary needs of both industry and individuals. These programs are not training workers for yesterday’s jobs, but instead are constantly evolving to support both the technical needs of industry and the educational needs of individuals. This is largely due to the fact that ATE-funded programs are required to have strong industry advisory boards in place and members of that board are required to participate actively in designing the curriculum, providing instruction, and hiring program graduates. And, for those of you who speculate that industry advisory boards will destroy liberal arts education in favor of worker training programs (which I agree could be a problem if an appropriate balance is not maintained between faculty and industry advisory groups), I want to assure you that such has not been the case among ATE-supported programs. In fact, the industry advisory boards have proven to be strong advocates for including rigorous humanities education as part of technical degree programs. These employers seem to understand that high-quality humanities courses yield employees that have better communication skills, reading and writing skills, and that are fundamentally more creative and able to solve problems independently.

Another strength of the ATE program is that it requires community colleges to work with local K-12 institutions as well as four-year colleges to ensure that students have strong foundational academic skills, access to people who can help them through difficult academic transition points, and the ability to transfer credits from one institution to the next. Seamless articulation pathways between high school, 2-year and 4-year institutions are the norm among ATE-funded programs. ATE programs are not designed to pigeon-hole individuals into dead-end jobs, but instead are designed to help students enter a new career area and evolve personally, professionally, and technically, throughout their lives. Surprisingly, many students who enroll in ATE-supported certificate programs already hold a bachelor’s degree from another institution and are back in school to start a new career or advance in their current career.

Your thoughts?

Michael Lesiecki