BC Awarded National Science Foundation Grant
Dec 3, 2019Bellevue College has been awarded a four-year, $1,970,027 grant from the National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education (NSF ATE) program. The grant project, titled Engaging Educators, Strengthening Practice, will design and facilitate workshops and virtual communities for community and technical college educators nationwide on how to create and sustain industry partnerships. “Industry relationships are critical…
“Industry relationships are critical for developing programs that are aligned with workforce needs, and ensuring students graduate with work-ready skills,” said Mary Slowinski, the grant’s principal investigator and a tenured faculty member at BC. “We found that educators often don’t know how to cultivate and steward industry relationships. These workshops will connect educators to best practices, guide them to develop an industry partnership development plan, and create learning communities where they can share their successes and challenges.”
The Engaging Educators, Strengthening Practice team includes Mary Slowinski, Rachael Bower and Edward Almasy (Internet Scout Research Group, UW-Madison) with support from an advisory committee made up of education, industry and professional association experts. This NSF ATE grant builds on the findings of a four-year $754,934 NSF ATE research grant awarded to this same team in 2015 which focused on the discovery, documentation and dissemination of key factors associated with industry/college partnerships.
The new funding will be used to develop instructional materials, tools and curricula on initiating and sustaining industry partnerships based on this research; deliver professional development workshops and webinars to guide the use of the materials; establish a virtual community of practice for post-workshop participant support, exchange and collaboration; create supplementary online workshop materials for reference by participants and others.
The project is funded by the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education Program, under DUE 1931215. The grant period for the NSF ATE award began Dec. 1, 2019.