West Kentucky Community and Technical College to participate in mentoring program
WKCTC was selected for a federally-funded mentorship program which aims to increase participation in STEM based educational programs, particularly at two-year institutions which tend to serve more students from underrepresented communities.
West Kentucky Community and Technical College has been chosen to participate in a national mentorship project funded by the National Science Foundation. The ten month Mentor-Connect program is intended to attract more two-year colleges to participate in the NSF's Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program. ATE was created to expand and improve mentoring opportunities for students interested in STEM fields. Mentor-Connect will provide training and support to a WKCTC team.
Acceptance into the Mentor-Connect program will assist WKCTC in developing a better NSF grant proposal, school officials say in a recent press release. For ten months, four WKCTC faculty will work together to develop a project proposal for a grant to be awarded in 2021. The team will receive technical support and training from the Mentor-Connect program. The project proposal will be judged based on the stated goals of the ATE program. According to NSF's publication, the objective of ATE is to encourage STEM education, mentorship, and eventual employment of communities underrepresented in STEM fields. To that end, WKCTC is developing a project that focuses on curriculum relating to engineering technology and advanced manufacturing. These fields, according to the release from WKCTC, are the areas in which the college can respond most quickly to the demands of local STEM field employers.
The ATE program encourages this collaboration for the project grant proposals. They also suggest that grant applicants reach out to and work with other national organizations such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Manufacturing USA Institutes, and the NSF Industry University Cooperative Research Centers Program.