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Are you thinking of a “belated” New Year’s resolution?  Want to: improve one of your advanced technology associate degrees; start a new technical program; provide needed faculty professional development; add new courses; or recruit more women into your program?  If so, you should consider submitting a grant proposal to the National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education (NSF ATE) program! The next submission date is OCTOBER 5, 2018.  Right now, in early January, as the new year begins and many of us start a new semester on campus is the perfect time to start working on a proposal idea. Typically, NSF ATE proposals are developed to address one or more of the needs a technical college program might have.  Over the past decade, the number of active NSF ATE awards at Florida state and community colleges has grown significantly.  Currently 21 projects and centers are funded at 13 of our 28 state and community colleges.  There are also four ATE grant...

FLATE's focus on manufacturing excellence is fueled by its NSF ATE funding support to build two-year degree advanced technical education programs that effectively contribute to Florida's advanced manufacturing workforce.   The FLATE partnership and merger with FloridaMakes  represents a mechanism to expand this advanced manufacturing workforce creation  to impact all of the pathways to workforce excellence. D.L. Jamerson Elementary School, a full-service school in St. Petersburg Florida, demonstrates our model curriculum that foreshadows this continuum of workforce development efforts. A detailed examination of their website, https://www.pcsb.org/jamerson-es , is recommended however, their Vision and Mission statements will provide a quick peek.    Coincident with FLATE's foundation in 2003, the Pinellas County School District was faced with a poor performance elementary school that needed immediate and drastic attention.   Together with the s...

Florida’s manufacturing future is bright if we can get all of the puzzle pieces to fit!   Perhaps the easiest part of the picture is the upgrade of manufacturing facilities to meet today's advanced manufacturing mission. Of course, "easy" is a relative term and this time the word reflects the component of manufacturing excellence that the manufactures actually have a "handle" on. They know the technologies that they want to insert into their manufacturing processes. They know the advantages and challenges that advanced manufacturing creates and they know why it is crucial to push their processes to new technologies and procedures. The "hard" part is reflected in the reality that the manufacturers alone cannot create the workforce that optimally complements the advanced technologies being inserted into the manufacturing environment. This reality plus the fact that the workforce talent pool they will draw from must have candidates that demonstrate a dept...