News & Events

Upcoming Events

BATEC Team Members will Attend Synergy 2010

Selected team members from the BATEC team are traveling to San Francisco, CA on June 27-30 to discuss the scaling of innovations across the ATE Community. BATEC has chosen to scale up their tech programs in order to reach a wider community in Massachusetts. BATEC will present their innovations to 13 members of the ATE and NSF community. Should you want to learn more Synergy or the project please click here.

BATEC Summer Institutes, July - August

The BATEC Summer Institutes will be held July and August in Summer 2010. This year, courses will be held at Bristol Community College, Bunker Hill Community College, Quinsigamond Community College and the University of Massachusetts Boston. New topics being planned include: Analytics, Cloud Computing, Dreamweaver/Flash/Photoshop, Internet Security, iJava, Information Storage, IT Essentials, IT Problem Solving, Office 2010/Windows 7, Programming for the Android, Social Networking Tools, Virtualization and others. Courses and registration information are currently available. Please click here for more information and to register now!

Recent News

New Grants

UMass Boston received two new grants this fall to augment work being done by BATEC. The first award, entitled "Research, Practice and Transformation through Synergy, is a three-year project that will fund a collaborative laboratory (or "collaboratory") to research scalability within the Advanced Technological Education(ATE) program of the National Science Foundation and use those findings to transform ten Centers into models for scale. It is the project's goal that these sites be true partners in the success of this venture, contributing to, as much as benefiting from, the knowledge and experience amassed over the duration of the grant. This will be accomplished through a community of practice based on intentional communication and collaboration. Utilizing the expertise of leading researchers, the Synergy Collaboratory will employ a problem-solving, continuous improvement process of equipping ATE leaders and program participants with tools and processes to better realize the potential scale and impact of their centers and projects. It is envisioned that this will result in the creation and growth of a national network of knowledge, skills, and expertise that will be shared across the country and throughout various channels of education. The selected centers from across the country will meet in January in Albuquerque, NM to begin their journey.

The second grant, entitled Advancing the Successful IT Student through Enhanced Computational Thinking (ASSECT), brings together community colleges and universities in five regions - Bunker Hill Community College and University of Massachusetts Boston in Massachusetts, Northern Virginia Community College and George Mason University in Virginia, Ivy Tech Community College and Purdue University in Indiana, Cameron University in Oklahoma and City College of San Francisco and California State - Monterrey in California. The ASSECT partners will embark on a three-year Class II project to revitalize undergraduate computing education through new research that correlates Jeanette Wing's vision of Computational Thinking (CT) with the new IT Volume developed by the Special Interest Group for Information Technology Education (SIGITE) of the ACM to develop a CT framework for researching and building instructional elements. This outcome will produce core computing concepts, methodologies, frameworks, and tools that can be applied across a variety of institutions and inform teaching and learning in undergraduate computing in a variety of environments.

Recent Programs & Events

Tech Futures Forum, May 18th

BATEC, in collaboration with its partner CAITE, held the Tech Futures Forum at Microsoft's New England Research and Development (NERD) Center at One Memorial Drive in Cambridge on Tuesday, May 18th. Over 90 participants, including students from the Parkway Academy of Health and Technology and Shawsheen Valley Technical High School, attended the event. Keynote speaker Rachel Schiff, Senior Program Manager in Microsoft's Fuse Labs in Cambridge, spoke about "Games for Learning". Students (and a few lucky faculty members) were given a tour of Microsoft's NERD Center, which included a stop in the Xbox3 gaming areas. Participants were also welcomed to several workshops hosted by industry, which included:

- Beyond 'Geeks': Resources for Diversifying IT
- Improving Tech Student Employability: Microsoft Programs for Tech Students
- Master of Motivation: Engaging Students with Smartphones and Google Android
- Microsoft Academic Resources: Windows Azure & Cloud Computing
- Take a Byte and Learn About A Free Storage Available Through the EMC Academic Alliance
- Uncovering Smoking Guns with Computer Forensics
- User Experience for the Web and Mobile Applications
- Virtualization: What It Is All About and Its Advantages to Education
- What Employers are Looking for in Potential Candidates for Hire

BATEC and CAITE would like to thank our partners from Microsoft, Arsenal Consulting, EMC, IBM, Olin College, Mendoza Design, Mountain View Technologies and UMass Amherst for making this event possible for our educators and students.

For more information about past Futures Forums, please click here.

Developing the Green STEM Pipeline, May 14th

BATEC, the Dome Alliance, Bunker Hill Community College, the Latino STEM Alliance, and the Metro Boston Secondary/Post Secondary CVTE Linkage Consortium sponsored a joint spring symposium for administrators and educators in mathematics, science, engineering and technology at schools in Massachusetts and the Boston metropolitan area, scientists, engineers and students at Bunker Hill Community College.

the objective of the day was to allow colleagues to share experiences, hear about developments in state and federal funding, learned about a completed and ongoing college green project, a vocational high school's renewable energy projects, and a proposed hydroponics project at Bunker Hill Community College.

Featured speakers included:

Richard Harris, Director of Multicultural Engineering, Northeastern University

Marybeth Campbell, Workforce Development Program Director, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center

Barnas G. Monteith, Advance Diamond Solutions, Inc.; MA Governor STEM Council appointee; MA State Science and Engineering Fair, Chairman of the Board;

After the opening morning session, participants were given several workshop options to attend. BATEC Director Deborah Boisvert presented a workshop for attendees on Green IT and its future in Massachusetts.

The DOME Alliance is most interested in 1) increasing the visibility of local needs in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math 2) building bridges between corporate & government funding sources and local schools 3) educating/emphasizing the importance for diversity in STEM

High Tech Regional College Fair, April 9th

The High Tech Regional College Fair was held on Friday, April 9th at the Reggie Lewis Track and Field Center in Boston. Over 11000 students attended this event to learn about pathways to technology jobs after college. Advisors attending the event helped counsel students about the pathways to higher education. Financial aid and admissions staff were also on hand to talk about the process of applying for college. Over 40 colleges and educational support service organizations were also in attendance to share information about their programs with the students.

Please contact Outreach Director Jibril Solomon at jsolomon@techboston.org for more information about this event.

Women in Science Event, April 6th

BATEC Director Deborah Boisvert presented a talk on Tuesday, April 6th to the Women in Science Club at the University of Massachusetts Boston about the intersection of computing and other disciplines. Thirty-five women involved in STEM fields attended the event.

Metro North College Fair, March 19th

This year's Metro North College Fair took place at Middlesex Community College on March 19th. This hands-on, annual interactive program exposes high school juniors and seniors to the various technology program offerings at Middlesex and Northern Essex Community Colleges. Students also receive career, admissions and financial-aid orientation.

For more information about this event, please email Jibril Solomon, Outreach Director at jsolomon@techboston.org.

ICT Careers Day, Monday, December 14th

The 4th Annual ICT Careers Day, held in partnership with CAITE, was held on Monday, December 14th at the University of Massachusetts Boston. This event brought together over 250 students from 12 high schools to learn about technology through hands-on activities with industry partners. This year, students attended three different sessions, which included information on the following topics: high tech start-ups, client infrastructure design, gaming, GIS, exergaming, green technologies, INNOV8, opencourseware, pathology informatics, and technology incubators.

Representatives from IBM, Microsoft, Partners HealthCare, Suffolk Technology Partners and UMass Bostons EEOS Department, Informational Technology Services Division and the Venture Development Center presented this year.