Bridgette Kirkpatrick, professor of biotechnology and biology at Collin College in Frisco, Texas, uses Mentor-Connect’s free online Resource Library when she prepares grant proposals to the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education program. She has also directed colleagues and her MentorLinks mentees to Mentor-Connect’s resources. Mentor-Connect is an ATE project hosted by Florence-Darlington Technical College in partnership with the American Association of Community Colleges.

“In the webinars they give really good advice,” Kirkpatrick said. She has applied for multiple ATE grants and each time views Mentor-Connect’s webinars on forms and budgets to learn about NSF updates to those required documents. She likes being able to fast forward to particular sections of webinars, listen, stop, and repeat sections of the recordings after completing parts of the forms and budgets.   

“They do a really good job of explaining those things,” she said, referring to Mentor-Connect leaders’ recorded advice about the details within the ATE grant application.

Kirkpatrick also praises the informal guidance that she and the team led by the Georgia Biomedical Partnership received in 2020 from Mentor-Connect Principal Investigator Elaine Craft while preparing an ATE grant proposal. Mentor-Connect is an ATE project hosted by Florence-Darlington Technical College in partnership with the American Association of Community Colleges.

Although they were not part of a Mentor-Connect cohort*, Kirkpatrick said, “Elaine Craft helped us immensely.”

Kirkpatrick is now a co-principal investigator of the Implementation of an Industry-Recognized Credentialing System for Biotechnicians project that received a $1.2 million ATE grant in May 2021. Philip Gibson is the principal investigator of the initiative that aims to expand a biotech industry-wide credentialing system across the U.S.

“Elaine was just so, so helpful to us. I can’t say enough nice things about what she did for us because she met with us regularly. She read and reviewed. And, you know, she really was outstanding in the help and the guidance that she gave,” Kirkpatrick said. Whenever team members thanked Craft, she would simply say, “It’s just what Mentor-Connect does.”

* Each year Mentor-Connect selects a cohort of about 20 faculty-led teams from colleges that are new to the ATE program. Teams in the Mentor-Connect cohort receive formal mentoring and technical support during the nine months leading up to the October deadline for ATE proposals. Mentor-Connect also offers services of shorter duration through its Second Chance Mentoring, Moving Up Mentoring, and Co-Mentoring programs. Apply for Mentor-Connect mentoring at https://www.mentor-connect.org/get-a-mentor