Community Colleges Advocate for NSF Program

The National Science Foundation has been roiled by changes since President Trump took office for his second term. The administration canceled a slew of grants, cut its staff, ordered “senior appointees” to take charge of giving out and denying future grants, and abruptly laid off its entire board this spring. Research universities have been watching warily as the major provider of federal research funding reels.

But community college advocates say research institutions aren’t the only ones with concerns for the agency. They’re anxious about the long-term health of NSF’s Advanced Technological Education program, which supports STEM training for technical fields that don’t necessarily require bachelor’s degrees, such as cybersecurity, biotechnology and artificial intelligence. Since its founding, the 32-year-old program has invested about $1.6 billion in training related to these fields spearheaded by community colleges, according to advocates.

Community colleges are required to lead, or act as major partners, for all ATE-funded projects. And the funds go a variety of state and regional projects, focused on curriculum and program development, educator training and applied research on technical education in high-demand technical fields. The program also supports Consortia for Innovations in Technician Education to strengthen partnerships between community colleges and industry and 10 centers across the country dedicated to improving technical education.

“When people think of the NSF, their mind doesn’t necessarily go first to workforce development,” said James Hermes, associate vice president of government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges, but “this is very much a workforce development program.”

Some community college leaders worry upheaval at the NSF might bode ill for the program, hampering innovation at community colleges in STEM-heavy technical fields and pipelines for these cutting-edge industries in their regional economies.

ATE has historically enjoyed bipartisan support, said Hermes, so he doesn’t have “grave fears” for its fate just yet. But “we’re obviously not taking anything for granted and advocating for a good funding outcome for the program.” AACC is calling for a $10 million increase for ATE projects.

The NSF has been spared from the $4.8 billion cut proposed by the Trump administration for fiscal year 2027; House Republicans proposed legislation that would reduce the agency’s funding by only about $1.75 billion.

But already, the ATE program has been affected by recent political turmoil at the NSF, said Ellen Hause, associate vice president of academic and student affairs at AACC. Some program awards for 2026 would have typically gone out by now, but the process has been delayed. She suspects that’s in part because the program’s staff has been cut in half.

“There is no one in the ATE program leading it right now that comes from a community college,” Hause said. “They are strong advocates for [community colleges], but we have lost that institutional knowledge … We’ve lost a lot of leadership that understood this sector, were proponents of this sector, and as NSF is grappling with changes and leadership changes, we don’t want to get lost in that.”

The Impact

The fields supported by the Advanced Technological Education program are the “cutting-edge stuff that is really at the forefront of our economy,” such as nanotechnology, mechatronics and environmental technology, said Hermes.

For example, Miami Dade College in Florida, Houston City College and Maricopa Community Colleges in Arizona in 2024 established the National Applied Artificial Intelligence Consortium, thanks to a $2.8 million ATE grant, to develop programs and educational materials for pipelines to high-demand AI fields.

“We wanted to create the space to have community college graduates … play a role in the AI industry, and that wasn’t a thing when we first started,” said Eduardo Salcedo, principal investigator for the consortium.

The consortium’s work with colleges across the country has since “exploded,” disseminating AI teaching materials and resources to hundreds of educational institutions nationwide and training about 3,200 faculty and staff members on how to craft and teach AI programs, Salcedo said. During its first year, the consortium also mentored three institutions developing AI programs; that group of mentees has since grown to 13 colleges and counting.

“Without the help of ATE, I don’t think this would have been possible at all,” Salcedo said. He emphasized that it’s not just about the money, but also the program’s collaborative culture. Awardees gather for annual conferences and office hours where they can swap ideas and work through challenges.

“You get to learn from everybody and create new connections,” he added. “You’re no longer in a silo. You’re now in a community.”

Aron Kamajaya, biotechnology program director at Los Angeles Pierce College, said his college didn’t initially have funds to teach biotechnology—the equipment was too expensive—but an ATE award got the program off the ground in 2022. The biotechnology associate degree program has since quadrupled in size, from roughly 20 students when it started to more than 80 annually.

He believes the clout of the NSF funding helped to draw students to the fledgling program, which “made waves at the college,” spurring the launch of a biomanufacturing baccalaureate degree this fall. The NSF funding also supports internships at the college and sparked a partnership with Illumina, a San Diego DNA sequencing technology company, to bring its high school curriculum to LA classrooms.

“Through all of this funding, essentially we were able to attract more partnerships,” Kamajaya said. “As the saying goes, money attracts money.”

Hause said community colleges, including small rural institutions, can often use ATE awards to attract much-needed additional funding from industry partners. The program “provides that foundational funding that can then be scaffolded to other investments,” which can have a major impact on less resourced institutions and their local economies, she said.

As a result, she believes the stakes of any ill effects on the Advanced Technological Education program are high. She pointed out that the U.S. STEM workforce is about 37 million strong, and roughly half of these workers don’t have bachelor’s degrees, a population “vital to the success of these industries.”

If the program is hampered, “it impacts our ability to respond to industry need and to be nimble, to prepare STEM technicians,” Hause said. “We’re not going to be able to meet workforce demand in our local regional economies.” The program is critical to “providing the AI workforce that this administration is calling for,” among other fields. “If this program is crippled, it actually takes away our ability … to stay competitive.”