NCAT Viewbook 2025 Final Version (7)

About NCAT & ATE NCAT Partners Pathways & Initiatives Educator Resources Student Resources First National ATE Center in Autonomous Technologies

What is NCAT? National Center for Autonomous Technologies NCAT is THE resource hub for autonomous technology education and career pathways. NCAT is funded through the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education (NSF ATE) program. As the first national ATE center in autonomous technologies, NCAT is crafting, adapting, and implementing educational resources to support 7-12 educators and two-year college faculty in meeting workforce demands while increasing the quality of the highly skilled technical workforce.

No end to the journey, only new skies, roads and oceans to explore.

"I believe autonomous technologies are transformative, changing the way society lives, works, travels and learns.

Advancement of autonomous technologies will require a highly skilled and adaptable technical workforce. NCAT leads the nation's education in preparing the highly skilled technical workforce to cultivate opportunities that autonomous technologies are generating. NCAT is building the workforce by inspiring the future problemsolvers, providing advanced skills training to leadership, connecting with industry and forming a nation-wide network of collaborators. There is no end to the journey, only new skies, roads and oceans to explore."

Jonathan Beck, Executive Director | Principal Investigator jonathan.beck@northlandcollege.edu | (218) 683-8831

WHO WE ARE, WHAT WE DO

OUR MISSION WHAT WE ASPIRE TO BE

OUR VISION

Lead the education of the nation's workforce in autonomous technologies by working together to expand educational resources that meet job market needs, create career paths, and involve stakeholders from education, industry, government, and related ATE Centers and Projects.

NCAT's vision is to strategically navigate the future of autonomous technologies through visionary thought leadership and collaboration among stakeholders.

Empowering Futures

CORNERSTONES LEAD

INSPIRE

lead1 /lēd/

in·spire /inˈspī(ə)r/

verb verb: Define skill standards and offer professional development opportunities for educators and industry professionals.

verb verb: Promote and provide support to encourage engagement in STEM and autonomous technologies in secondary and post-secondary education.

CONNECT

SERVE

con·nect /kəˈnekt/

serve /sərv/

verb verb: Engage workforce and community stakeholders generating added value in programs and the workplace through opportunities using autonomous technologies.

verb verb: Provide the educational resources for curriculum interactive content, application and exchange of ideas for autonomous technologies across the country.

Strength Through Partnerships Northland Community & Technical College, along with five additional partner agencies were awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant facilitating the formation of the National Center for Autonomous Technologies (NCAT). NCAT values and finds strength through our partners who are diversely spread across the nation and bringing in expertise from air, land, and sea domains of autonomous technologies.

AIR: UNCREWED AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS Uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS), commonly known as drones, are being used by many industries from agriculture to zoology. The use of drones has led to increased safety, decreased costs and less impact on wildlife and their habitats. The FAA reports that in 2024 more than 842,000 small commercial UAS are registered, and that number is expected to reach over 1 million in the next four years. With more drones, comes the need for more advanced technician education and more qualified technicians in the workforce. NCAT serves as a resource hub to meet those workforce demands.

Director of Aviation Maintenance St. Cloud Community & Technical College zackary.nicklin@sctcc.edu (320) 308-5482 sctcc.edu

Northland Community & Technical College Northland Aerospace is leading Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and technician education by accelerating developments in advanced technological programs. Northland has received several NSF ATE grants, including two consecutive awards of NCAT. Northland has been instrumental in developing the standards and regulations that govern autonomous technologies by establishing the first industry standards for UAS Maintenance Technicians in collaboration with the National Center for Aerospace and Transportation Technologies (NCATT), now a part of ASTM International.

Northland was selected by the FAA National COE for UAS Technology to lead the development of various technician standards.

60+

$27M

1st

$18M

Years Aviation Maintenance Technician Program

Received in State and Federal Grants

UAS Maintenance Program in the Nation

UAS Training Equipment Provided by Industry Partners

Leading UAS Technician Education

LAND: UNCREWED GROUND VEHICLES Minnesota State Transportation Center of Excellence Minnesota State Transportation Center of Excellence is focused on developing a highly skilled workforce to meet the current and future needs for high-demand, high-paying, highgrowth, high-tech careers in Minnesota's transportation industries. To meet those current and future workforce needs, the Minnesota State TCOE promotes and aligns transportation career and employment opportunities.

70+

25+

Transportation programs at

Campuses across MN

Carl Borleis Interim Executive Director Minnesota State TCOE carl.borleis@dctc.edu (651) 423-8577 minntran.org

Rosem

ont

Benigno Cruz Senior Personnel | NCAT Co-PI | CAAT cruzb800@macomb.edu (586) 445-7905 autocaat.org

W ar

re n

Center for Advanced Automotive Technology The Center for Advanced Automotive Technology (CAAT) is based out of Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan and was created to meet the expanding workforce needs of the automotive industry by leading the way in advanced automotive technology, specifically focusing on connected and automated vehicles, vehicle electrification and vehicle light weighting.

Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS) NCAT supports TCOE professional development workshops that focus on ADAS. In these sessions, teachers from secondary and post-secondary landbased transportation programs or related programs learn how ADAS works using demonstrations and hands-on learning.

Electric Vehicles NCAT partners and collaborators are leaders in electric vehicles education.

View curriculum shared by highly qualifed instructors by using the QR code below.

SEA: UNCREWED MARITIME SYSTEMS Marine Technology Society Inspiration for Innovation MATE II is a non-profit corporation created by the principals of the NSF ATE-funded Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center at Monterey Peninsula College. MATE II was founded to support and sustain on-going education activities and programs initiated at the MATE Center, including its global ROV (remotely operated vehicle) competition, professional development workshops, instructional resources, and SeaMATE ROV kits.

MATE II's mission is to inspire and challenge students to learn and creatively apply science, technology, art, engineering and math to solving real-world problems in a way that strengthens critical thinking, collaboration, entrepreneurship, and innovation.

Montere

Jill Zande Co-PI | NCAT Executive Director | MATE II jzande@marinetech.org (831) 646-3082 mtsociety.org

y

GeoTech Center Empowering Colleges Growing the Workforce Louisville

Vince Dinoto, Jr.

Senior Personnel | NCAT Director | GeoTech Center vince.dinoto@kctcs.edu (502) 213-7280 geotechcenter.org

The National Geospatial Technology Center of Excellence (GeoTech Center) is located at Jefferson Community and Technical College with offices on the Southwest Campus in Louisville, KY, and members of the team located across the country. The GeoTech Center produced the Geospatial Technology Competency Model (GTCM) for the U.S. Department of Labor and has created model courses and dozens of concept modules for educators. They maintain the program finder maps for NCAT, the EARTh Center, and the GeoTech Center.

The GeoTech Center is known for their annual GeoEd Conference, regional workshops, virtual learning opportunities and webinars that they host.

National Visiting Committee: The National Visiting Committee (NVC) is an advocate for transformational concepts in technician education. Our NVC has a critical role in reviewing and assessing the operations, programs, or research of NCAT and providing valuable feedback and recommendations that help assure the highestquality outcomes in all aspects of the NCAT. Essentially acting as an outside advisory board with a focus on evaluating progress against national standards and best practices

1 2 3

Provide advice to the Principal Investigator and NCAT Center staff based on the collective expertise and perspectives through helpful feedback, advice and guidance to assist in broadening the perception of current trends in the AT field and recommend effective ways of disseminating NCAT center results.

Assess the Center's progress through an objective lens to help focus on issues important to NSF and the NCAT team, progress and plans, and develop recommendations which can help maximize their impact.

Advocate for the project, including helping to disseminate the project's achievements.

NSF ATE Grant Evaluators: Our Independent Consultants- Grant Evaluators have a critical role in helping systematically assess the effectiveness and impact of NCATs work. Evaluators collect and analyzing data to determine whether it achieved its stated goals and objectives, and positively influenced the targeted community or population; essentially, it's a process to see if the program is delivering the intended results with the grant funds provided.

FAA Programs Repository Drawing on NCAT's extensive resource collection in interactive content and community forum platform allowing for collaboration, the FAA saw NCAT as an ideal fit to host the FAA Unmanned Aircraft Systems Collegiate Training Initiative (UAS-CTI) and FAA Connected by Drones resource repositories.

The relationship with NCAT and the FAA models ways in which academia and government organizations can work together to create resilient partnerships that prepare the nation's workforce for the future.

Unmanned Aircraft Systems Collegiate Training Initiative (UAS-CTI) The FAA UAS-CTI was launched in April 2020 with a mission to collaborate with selected schools to deliver up-to-date UAS training tools, resources, and guidelines that will prepare students for careers in UAS and maintain a safe National Airspace System.

ncatech.org/uas-cti

Connected by Drones The FAA Connected by Drones is a local networking group created to learn and understand what types of operations are happening in jurisdictions and to share best practices on operations and community engagement.

ncatech.org/connected-by-drones

Drone Safety Team (DST)

141 UAS-CTI Institutions

ACROSS

45 States

The Drone Safety Team (DST) is an industry-government partnership committed to ensuring the safe operations of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in the National Airspace System (NAS). The DST strives to enable the safe integration of UAS by defining consensus-based safety enhancements based on a datadriven process and collaboration amongst members of the UAS industry.

ncatech.org/connected-by-drones

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities Initiative The primary outcome of NCAT's core KSA initiative is to investigate common curriculum across the air, land and sea domains of autonomous technologies in partnership with industry partners and existing programs. Industry recognition would be a second step in establishing this and outline a pathway that could be instituted at many two-year colleges to provide the backbone knowledge, skills and abilities that are common to multiple autonomous technology technicians.

NCAT is at the forefront of this initiative. Having developed the Core Standards of knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA) necessary for all advanced technicians, NCAT shares these standards with two and four-year colleges with UAS technician programs. To access the KSA project information, visit ncatech.org/dacum-ksa-reports.

Making Career Pathways More Accessible Students could then determine which sector they are most interested in and transfer to a school that provides specific training such as ROV or UAS technician training. Ideally it would drive interest in STEM and make these career pathways more accessible to a larger segment of the population, particularly underrepresented and underserved populations.

MATE FLOATS Students get real hands-on experience sending data collection floats into the ocean.

Visit MATE Floats to learn all about this wonderful opportunity.

Colorado School of Mines’ Center for Advanced Subsurfaced Earth Resource Models (CASERM) NCAT collaborated with three colleges--Northland Community & Technical Colleges, Nebraska Indian Community College, North Dakota State College of Science--to use each school’s area of expertise to use UAS to more easily locate and identify subsurface mineral resoureces, specifically gold. NCAT worked with the schools to test an experiemental drone with a hyperspectral camera that could identify the minerals. The drone was able to easily reach places that would require much more time and effort without it.

Robotics Education & Outreach Alliance In 2022, NCAT Co-PI Jill Zande proposed a forum to take place at Experience STEAM 2022 to address funding disparities among competition brands due to an imbalance in legislative support.

Lead by Dan Manz, REOA is advocating for equal funding opportunities among across and within all three domains in robotics competitions: air, land, and sea.

REOA compared and contrasted messaging analytics across the domains and robotics programs and compared these brandings and messaging with those of successful eSports programs. REOA is promoting the most successful messaging techniques to all robotics programs to reach traditionally underserved groups and to bring more awareness to parents and students regarding the positive long-term impact robotics competitions can have on students' education and career pathways.

Future of Educational Programs Bringing Together Resources & Connections The NCAT Mentoring program helps grow connections and collaboration amongst the ATE community. This program ensures that significant ATE expertise and knowledge extends beyond the life of the work and enables the legacy work of ATE to continue and be of use to new stakeholders and audiences. The synergy created by bringing experts and their knowledge bases into existing centers, projects and coordination networks helps scale and sustain the broader body of work under NSF ATE. If your two-year institution looking for resources. We are here to answer questions and assist by pointing you in the right direction and connecting you with resources on how to apply for an Advanced Technological Education (ATE) grant or connect you with a mentor through Mentor Connect. If you are unsure where to start, let us know!

Mentoring Schools, Faculty, and Administration NCAT routinely consults and advises educators (K-12 and post-secondary) on autonomous technologies program and course development, providing guidance.

Starting a drone program Equipment recommendations based on individual program needs and budgets Curriculum dissemination Professional Development Opportunities such as DRONETECH Educator Workshops Funding sources

Want to know more about NSF ATE? National Science Foundation & Advanced Technical Education

The NSF ATE program has been funding innovation at two-year colleges for over 30 years, focusing on the education of technicians for the high-technology fields that drive our nation's economy. The ATE program supports curriculum development; professional development of college faculty and secondary school teachers; career pathways to two-year colleges from secondary schools and from two-year colleges to four-year institutions; and other activities.

ATE by the Numbers

650 Professional Development Opportunities that were offered by ATE Projects and Centers in 2023

72%

5,270

ATE initiatives that modified degree or certificate programs in 2023 emphasized recruitment from groups underrepresented in STEM

In materials, such as courses, modules, labs and other resources were developed by ATE Centers and Projects in 2023

Professional Development Opportunities & Funding NCAT offers professional development for educators and industry professionals which include webinars as well as in-person, online and virtual reality workshops. In addition to offering our own events, we promote other opportunities related to autonomous technology and advanced technological education! If you have an event you'd like us to promote, visit ncatech.org/event-submission and submit your event information to us. We will promote your event to our large network of educators, students and industry leaders on our website and social media.

As

a

result

of

the

rapidly

advancing

technology

and

developments in technician education to support autonomous technology advances, NCAT is encouraging faculty to identify opportunities they believe are most relevant to trends in industry and implementation in education. This will involve an application process, screened under a merit review process to provide participant support funding.

Eligible Applicants Include:

Secondary Educators Faculty at community/technical colleges or universities Faculty supporting technician education

Why is Professional Development Funding so Important to NCAT? A study from the Center for Public Education finds that while quality teacher professional development significantly impacts student success (especially) in STEM areas, teachers in rural areas are far less likely to have access to them and are 20% less likely to attend such events. NCAT is dedicated to specifically serving the unique needs of rural students and faculty throughout the U.S., while expanding their engagement with successful technician education in autonomous technologies.

Apply Online! ncatech.org/professional-development

Starting a Drone Program?

Let us help.

NCAT provides the resources necessary to guide you through the process of starting a drone program at your school. We provide drone program guidance including information and consultation on equipment, software, funding, course development and curriculum resources. ncatech.org/starting-a-drone-program

Build connections and collaborate on the NCAT Community Forum. This is a public forum for students, educators, industry professionals and government to ask questions, network and share best practices.

Join in on the conversation! ncatech.org/community

DRONETECH Educator Network

NCAT has developed resources to help high schools leverage the power of drones and virtual reality for education. We partner with high schools to encourage engagement in STEM, spark passion in students, develop clear technology-focused career pathways, and create best practices for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math (STEAM) ecosystem. Through the NSF ATE program, all of our content is easily accessible and comes at no cost.

Resources Professional Development Funding

Grants & Funding

We offer reimbursement for teachers to attend professional development training, conference, and workshops. Apply today!

We provide resources on funding, grant opportunities, Project vision, NSF/ATE processes & programs.

Equipment Lending Program

Curriculum Resource Library

We have a lending library of educational equipment & tools- including drones, VR headsets, robotics kits, and video capture kits for schools to use.

We've got a ton of free content available for use. Our library has everything from starting a drone program, ADAS training, Maritime STEM, and GIS materials.

Resources Available

Grants & Funding

Drone Ops & Best Practices

Laws & Regulations

Curriculum Resources

Community Forum

Student Competitions

Immersive Learning Projects: Educators, students, and industry professionals can access REsource Collaborative for Immersive Technologies, extended reality platforms that provide immersive and interactive education methods.

KXR: This project is designed to address the critical need for innovative educational tools that can be seamlessly integrated into two-year college programs. By developing an open-source, enterprise-level XR platform optimized for educational use, KonnectXR (KXR) addresses critical gaps in current XR educational solutions, such as system compatibility, data security, and user accessibility.

Innocan: Students use VR goggles to simulate assembling and dissembling the Innocon drone, a large UAS.

Through collaboration of NSF ATE Centers and a non-profit educational organization, the M8-R SIM was developed as a virtual simulation game to educate users on operating a remotely operated underwater vehicle. The simulation itself was designed by NCAT partner, Clemson University Center for Workforce Development (CUCWD), which has developed more than 140 simulations, all of which were developed to give students a real-world experience, while learning about careers in technology fields.

ncatech.org/m8r-sim rovAR offers a cutting-edge augmented reality experience, allowing users to visualize individual and net force vector and interact with ROV motion like never before. Simulate real-world scenarios and pilot various ROV configurations with the need for costly equipment or water-filled pool. Are you a student, enthusiast, or MATE ROV Competition participant looking to take your skills to the next level? “rovAR” is the groundbreaking Ed-App from the National Center for Autonomous Technologies, designed to build your understanding of the Physics of Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) motion and revolutionize your ROVs design process.

https://ncatech.org/rovar/

Immersive Learning Projects:

STEM Camps From DRONETECH summer camps, where attendees get hands-on experience in the maintenance and operation of a drone, to VEX camps, where students work in teams to build and program robots for the competition field to MATE camps, where students focus on designing and building ROVs, NCAT supports and provides students with the opportunities to engage in STEM activities across air, land and sea.

Diversity Drives Innovation

NCAT promotes and provides support to encourage engagement in STEM and autonomous technologies in secondary and post-secondary education, particularly in underserved areas.

Based on existing partnerships created with Tribal Serving Colleges, and both rural and urban schools throughout the nation, we continue to remove barriers; creating a more diversified pipeline of incoming technicians.

Student Competitions

Student Competitions inspire and challenge students to learn and creatively apply STEM to solve problems and strengthen critical thinking, collaboration, entrepreneurship and innovation.

MATE ROV Competition The MATE ROV Competition challenges students from across the world to engineer Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) to complete a set of mission tasks based on real-world, workplace scenarios. Students transform their teams into start-up companies that in addition to their underwater robot, prepare technical reports, create marketing displays and deliver engineering presentations.

7,000

materovcompetition.org

Students Compete Each Spring

48

Regional Events Across the World

77%

Employed Alumni in STEM-Related Job

90 seconds Most exciting

in aerial sports.

Aerial Drone Competition The REC Foundation Aerial Drone Competition is perfect for after-school or weekend events, offering middle school and high school students an opportunity to get hands-on experience in STEM education in the form of an affordable, fast-paced game. Students learn to safely operate a drone, work as a team, and research workforce applications of aerial robotic technology and compete against other regional, state, and national teams.

"For young people, seeing the drones and simulators makes it real for them. NCAT offers our whole region so many resources."

aerial-drone-competition

Kathryn Brown | Northland Aviation Maintenance Graduate, MN

24,000+ Teams From

Countries Playing In Over

VEX Robotics VEX is the largest and fastest growing Elementary, Middle and High School robotics program offering students an exciting platform for learning about areas rich with career opportunities spanning science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Beyond science and engineering principles, VEX projects encourage teamwork, leadership, and problem-solving skills. vexrobotics.com

60

1,000 Tournaments Worldwide

NCAT STAFF: Stephanie Rispa

Communications Director National Center for Autonomous Technologies Stephanie.Rispa@Northlandcollege.edu (218)-683-8841 ncatech.org

Zachary Bladow

IT Specialist National Center for Autonomous Technologies Zachary.Bladow@Northlandcollege.edu (218)-683-8851 ncatech.org

Megan Hall

Office Administrative Specialist National Center for Autonomous Technologies Megan.Hall@Northlandcollege.edu (218)-683-8826 ncatech.org

13892 Airport Drive Thief River Falls, MN 56701 (218) 683-8801 NCAT@Northlandcollege.edu ncatech.org

Social Media:

Shaping Policy & Standards for AT The NCAT team serves on various advisory committees for organizations that support policy, standards and regulations. By serving on these committees, NCAT provides influence to help shape future environments of autonomous technologies.

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

NELSON MANDELA

This material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (DUE 2400926).