Thanks to the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education program, Mike Rudibuagh 's high-level collaborations with educators appear on a map like a giant spider web stretched across the country and with geospatial industry leaders in Illinois.
For Lake Land College students, Rudibaugh's professional network puts the most current geospatial technologies in their hands. It also keeps the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) program up-to-date in ways that help students get jobs—often directly from internships that are part of the college's GIS certificate program—or transfer smoothly to four-year degree programs. That's a big change since 2002 when Rudibaugh's one GIS course had few students and he struggled to show colleagues in other departments how helpful GIS knowledge could be for them and their students.
MentorLinks Leads to other ATE Contacts 
When he was selected in 2002 to receive mentoring through MentorLinks, a faculty development program the American Association of Community Colleges offers with NSF-ATE support, he met other community college educators who shared his enthusiasm for emerging GIS technologies. (At right: A ten year analysis of post-MentorLinks Networks)
"The main benefit was it hooked me up nationally with group of people who thought like I did. And I wasn't on an island. That kind of gave me more security that I wasn't the only one ... I found out through MentorLinks that there were a group of other faculty around the country in the ATE program who were thinking the same thing," he said. Over the next several years that group of educators collaborated and submitted a successful ATE grant proposal for what is now the GeoTech Center.
"It validated my thinking," he said of MentorLinks. The formal mentoring he received over two years also informed his curriculum development and student recruitment efforts. His GIS program's classes are now filled and he receives almost daily inquiries from educators who want to replicate Lake Land College's program or employers who want hire graduates from it.
Since Rudibaugh successfully completed MentorLinks, he has
- Mentored City College of San Francisco faculty members' creation of a GIS certificate through MentorLinks from 2005 to 2008.
- Helped Lincoln Land Community College in 2008 and Kaskaskia College in 2011 secure MentorLinks grants.
- Served as co-principal investigator of the NSF-ATE GeoTech Center from 2008 to 2011. In this role he
- Built the national map of GIS programs that appears on the center's homepage.
- Developed a model rural internship program at Lake Land College.
- Created a YouTube video series about GIS careers in rural areas.
- Won the 2011 Illinois Community College Faculty Association Award for his ATE work.
- Partnered with Kaskaskia College on a current ATE grant that promotes integration of GIS across disciplines at both colleges to prepare technicians for employment in Southern Illinois.
ATE Fosters Illinois and National Collaborations
The spirit of collaboration that is a part of MentoLinks and the ATE program as whole led Rudibaugh to reach out to educators in the Geography Departments at Kaskaskia and Lincoln to see if they could explore how they could work together. He told them, "We don't have the luxury of not working together. I know it's competitive for students, but we've seen the advantage of sharing our experiences to help each other rather more than working against each other."
The GIS certificate program that Rudibaugh developed during MentorLinks also includes research that students often do about college issues. A student's 2013 project showed the cost of gasoline doubled the attendance costs for the many Lake Land College students who commute from the edge of the rural community college district. "It's a great tool to actually see your regional student patterns and asses which areas you're serving," Rudibaugh explained.
As for the map of his professional networks, Rudibaugh said they did not exist before MentorLinks introduced him to Vince DiNoto, another MentorLinks mentee who now directs the GeoTech Center, and Deidre Sullivan, the Marine Advanced Technology Education Center director. They built his confidence and helped him maximize the resources of the ATE program. "My own networks and success are very much connected to MentorLinks helping connect me with leaders like them," Rudibaugh said.
Article by Internet Scout Research Group, reprinted from the ATE@20 blog, under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.