Improving Science and Engineering Technology Education at Community Colleges Phi Theta Kappa, the honor society for community colleges, in cooperation with the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) is developing and conducting a multi-component faculty enhancement and curriculum development project to improve and strengthen the teaching of science, mathematics, engineering, and technology (SMET) at the nation's community colleges. The project is accomplishing its goals through a set of activities designed to stimulate and assist other community colleges to replicate a set of effective NSF-supported community college curriculum materials and faculty development projects; thereby improving SMET education on their campuses and ultimately to two-year colleges nationwide through dissemination activities. The activities to be conducted include: (a) Establishing of a corps of seven mentors drawn from NSF-supported projects at community colleges including Sinclair Community College (manufacturing), Eastern Iowa Community College (environmental education), Chemeketa Community College (sustainable resources), and Prince George's Community College (remote sensing, image processing, and geographic information systems). (b) Conducting a national competition to select 14 colleges to participate in activities listed below to assist them to replicate the selected NSF projects. (c) Convening two National Science Education Conferences, the first to work with mentors to learn about the curricula to be implemented and prepare a plan to integrate these into their curricula and the second to report on progress. (d) Publishing three networking newsletters and a final case study monograph documenting the work of the participating colleges.
