The Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts is the only community-based organization serving on the Board of this innovative approach to developing academia curricula for a technology workforce initiative. It is the pathway of a national educational response to industry demands in their fields of technology expertise. ATE (Advanced Technological Education) Connections are the flagships of excellence in the best practices for technicians to become the standard for educators throughout the United States.

The Boston Area Advanced Technological Education Connections (BATEC) will develop and promote a coordinated, self-sustaining, regional education and workforce development system for IT, one that will attract a diverse student population to IT careers, promote lifelong learning of IT skills and support the workforce needs of the region's IT companies and departments.

As defined by the National Research Council (NRC), IT workers are "those persons engaged primarily in the conception, design, documentation, adaptation, implementation, deployment, training, support, documentation, and management of information technology systems, components or applications" (2001). The speed of development in IT and technology in general has changed the paradigm of education: academia needs an interdisciplinary approach that balances rigor with applied methodologies to prepare students for the constantly evolving needs of industry. Educational pathways in IT do not just follow a linear progression from a high school diploma to an associates degree at the community college and a bachelors degree or beyond at the university level. Because of the dynamic nature of the technologies, students increasingly weave in and out of the education and workforce arena, often confused by the plethora of options and discouraged by redundant or mismatched course offerings.

The BATEC education and business partners will use IT skill standards and performance-based assessments to align their education and workforce development opportunities to facilitate efficient transition from one point to the next. BATEC will document lessons learned and disseminate the information through a variety of channels. BATEC will accomplish its objectives by focusing on three critical success factors: closer collaboration with community and industry; flexibility of delivering education and training; and long-term sustainability. This means establishing innovative processes and collaborations that deliver ongoing benefits to participants: to academia - more relevant curricula, a higher degree of sharing the cost and effort of developing educational materials, and closer connection to the region's workforce; to communities - ways to continuously increase the diversity and skill level of its citizens and the regional competitiveness; to companies - clear and demonstrable business value above and beyond philanthropy.

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