MATE Center Summer Institutes: Providing Faculty with the Skills and Experiences to Improve their Curriculum
Authors: Lunsford Tami L. 
Published: October 2008

The Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center partners with working professionals from industry to conduct faculty development institutes that provide teachers with experiences that simulate the workplace. The institutes aim to help improve technical education by providing teachers with the knowledge, experiences, resources, and connections they need to teach their students about current marine technology.

About the MATE Center

The MATE Center is a national partnership of organizations and individuals concerned with marine science and technology and the education of people to work in that field. Located at Monterey Peninsula College (MPC) in Monterey, California, the MATE Center was established with funding from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Program as a Center of Excellence in September 1997. Additional NSF funding was received in 2003 for MATE to continue its very successful programs.

Program History

Over the past seven years, the MATE Center has conducted surveys and workshops with members of the marine industry in order to gather information on the skills, knowledge, and abilities needed to perform in several marine technical occupational areas. The information gathered from these surveys and workshops is used to develop knowledge and skill guidelines (KSGs). To day, KSGs have been developed for Marine Research (shipboard) Technicians, Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) Technicians, Hydrographic Survey Technicians, Aquaculture Technicians, and Oil Spill Response Technicians.

The MATE Center has used these industry-based KSGs to guide the development of curricula. This curricula is disseminated to teachers via MATE's Summer Institutes for Faculty Development.

Teaching Teachers

Each summer, approximately forty educators from high schools, community colleges, universities, and informal educational organizations from across the country participate in intensive week-long workshops held by the MATE Center in Monterey, California. The institutes are taught by instructors with extensive experience in the subject material, and working professionals who provide important information, material, and practical examples. The institutes consist of lectures, hands-on activities, and field trips, and are offered on a variety of topics related to marine technology including ROVs and Geographical Information Systems (GIS).

ROV Institutes

The ROV institutes are designed to help improve the national marine technology workforce by providing teachers with the knowledge, skills, and resource materials needed to implement a submersible technology course or after- school club at their home institutions. During the institutes the teachers work in teams to design and build ROVs to accomplish specific tasks. At the end of the week, the different teams compete to see which teams have the best and most reliable design. They also talk with ROV technicians, and receive instruction in such areas as history and types of submersible vehicles, subsea physics (including buoyancy and stability), ROV electronics and hydraulics, and ROV piloting. The teachers are also encouraged to use their new knowledge and skills to create teams of students to compete at the annual MATE / Marine Technology Society's (MTS) ROV Committee National Student ROV Competitions (see paper #16998 for more information on the competitions).