Companies in the fields of technology, manufacturing, service, retail/distribution, and non-profits are encouraged to nominate themselves. There will also be a Rising Star award.

The deadline for nominations is February 29, 2012.

Find out more about the nomination process

I head up a hill to a couple of re-purposed old buildings, now the home of the Advanced Math and Science Academy Charter School (AMSA).

A big sign welcomes me by name. Folks are friendly and easy, which seems to be the charter way. Because prospective students must apply to get in and be chosen by lottery, public charter schools enjoy the luxury of having teachers and families who actually want to be there. It tends to jolly up school atmosphere. AMSA adults shoo kids to class. The kids chat and dawdle. So far, this school seems pretty typical.

Typical it is not. In my 20-plus years of visiting schools, I’ve never seen anything like it. Business and industry have been screaming for better-prepared students for the STEM workforce – science, technology, engineering and math. But this school delivers incredibly well-prepared kids – in all subjects! – using a set of such unusual strategies, I’ll be spending the next three weeks examining them.

About AMSA

AMSA opened in the fall of 2004 with 300 6th and 7th graders. It grew by a grade each year, to grade 12, graduating its first class last spring.

But as the original 7th-grade class finished 8th grade, fully half of them chose to go elsewhere for 9th grade. School leaders were dumbstruck. The same drop happened the following year, leaving, curiously, 62 kids in each of those classes. Apparently, parents liked AMSA’s rigorous middle-school curriculum, but didn’t trust that a new charter could make their kids maximally attractive to colleges. Mid-Massachusetts also happens to be home to some of the nation’s most prestigious private schools, like Phillips Andover Academy.

Even so. While some of the most talented and well-supported kids departed, the remaining students stepped up big time. They have since enrolled or been recently accepted into Harvard, Brown, Cornell, University of Chicago and the like. Of course many are going to the state’s own universities, but the first two graduating classes proved that AMSA competes handsomely with “the best.” The attrition from grade 8 to 9 has diminished greatly. Why pay for the elitism of private school when a diverse public school offers excellent college preparation?

Bear in mind that any kid can put her name in the hat for a charter seat. Among AMSA’s current 966 students are geniuses, flakes and struggling learners. Enrollment preference goes first to siblings of current students, then students from four contiguous towns, Marlborough, Clinton, Maynard, and Hudson. If those groups don’t fill the roster, the school accepts students from anywhere. When they first opened, AMSA took kids from far and wide because the local public schools publically smeared AMSA in an effort to hang onto their kids.

While the school has only has a small portion of students eligible for federally-subsidized lunch (a poverty indicated), it is quite diverse. The professionals who work in the core towns’ computer and bio-tech industries tend to live elsewhere. These days about 46 percent of the students come from blue-collar Marlborough, the school’s home town.

Given the rigors of the program, the moment students arrive, they are tested so the school can map out a remediation strategy to bring all kids, no matter their background, up to grade level.

Success

With the diversity of the student population in mind, let’s get a few more of AMSA’s achievements on the record:

Last year, AMSA’s 10th graders were #1 in the state in the state test, the MCAS.

In math, the 10th graders were #8 out of nearly 400 MA high schools. But AMSA was #1 for students scoring Advanced – 89% of last year’s 10th graders scored Advanced, beating out even the prestigious exam-school, Boston Latin.

The 8th graders were 2nd in the state on the MCAS science test.

Out of the 250 Advance Placement exams that AMSA students took, 81 percent got a 3 or higher, which is considered college-level achievement. Fifty-nine percent had a 4 or 5 (the highest).

The average score of the student body on the math SAT II was 740 (out of a perfect 800).

And just to show that the humanities are not slighted, the Latin Club were national champions at the “novice level” and came in 5th place at the “intermediate level.”

There’s more, but why harp? The question is: who are these guys? And how did they do it?
Over the next three weeks, we’ll look at three of their principal strategies. First, they use an “Eastern Block” curriculum, which is apparently everyday fare for, say, Russians. (A Russian started the school.)

Then we’ll delve into the requirement that every student in grades 6-11 take year-long computer- science courses.

And lastly, we’ll look at the advantages of instructors from different subjects collaborating on teaching the same topic. The humanities teachers might study the Greeks through the different lenses of literature, history, geography and art.

It’s a really unusual and rigorous place. With an upbeat atmosphere to boot.

This story originally appeared here

In Worcester, two stations will be located at Quinsigamond Community College, one at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and the remaining five – which are available to the public – at three sites around the city: two at the Major Taylor Boulevard parking garage, two at Union Station and one in the parking garage at City Hall.

The stations at those three sites are part of National Grid’s new “smart grid” program with the City of Worcester, according to National Grid spokesman John Gilbrook.National Grid is also installing stations at select “99″ and Chili’s restaurants, including “99″ locations in Auburn, Milford, Marlborough, Westford and Foxborough, as well as Chili’s sites in Auburn, Leominster, Plainville and Westford. The National Grid office and training center on Latti Farm Road in Millbury will also have a station.

National Grid announced the installations yesterday under a program sponsored by Coulomb Technologies Inc. Through its “Charge America” program, Coulomb, which is based in Campbell, Calif., is providing the charging stations at no cost to participating cities. National Grid is funding the station installations; the hosting location partners will fund the cost of power to charge the vehicles.National Grid expects to complete installation of all stations by the end of this month.

“National Grid is proud to be part of this program, which helps consumers embrace (electric vehicles) as an emerging form of transportation,” said Edward White, vice president of customer strategy for National Grid.

This story originally appeared here

Strong sales were attributed to demand for CAM350 software in Asia, as well as a dramatic increase in their custom software development program for BluePrint-PCB.

Asian revenues grew 34.5% over 2010, as more Chinese-based fabrication facilities came online in 2011. Consulting sales climbed 54% over 2010, with organizations standardizing on BluePrint-PCB, Downstream says.

The firm also reported a 30.4% EBITA for both 2010 and 2011.

The company said it would launch new products and initiatives and offer special pricing on products and bundles this year.

The company says it has more than 1,000 customer companies with an estimated 7,000 users.

This story originally appeared here

February 13, 2012 – After serving two years as the chief financial officer of New Hampshire-based Salient Surgical Technologies, Richard Altieri will now take the financial reigns of another medical technology business, this time for a company in Massachusetts.

Altieri, who led the charge to take Salient public and ultimately led the company’s acquisition by Medtronic and who also played a role in the acquisition of Mitek Surgical to Johnson & Johnson, will join the executive team at Oxford Immunotec Ltd., a medical diagnostics business with offices in Marlborough and England.

Oxford Immunotec has developed T-Spot, a technology used to measure a patient’s immune response to infections and diseases such as tuberculosis. At Oxford, Altieri will be tasked with leading the company’s financial growth in the T cell measurement market.

Oxford Immunotec CEO Peter Wrighton-Smith said Altieri will be a tremendous asset to the company, in a release announcing his appointment.

Salient announced its $525 million sale to medical device giant Medtronic Inc. in July 2011. The company was co-founded as Tissuelink Medical Inc. in 1999 by then president and CEO M. Jacqueline Eastwood, who was named as a Mass High Tech All-Star in 2003.

Oxford Immunotec first landed its North American headquarters in Marlborough in 2008. In April 2010, Oxford Immunotec received the second tranche of a $26 million investment led by New Leaf Venture Partners of New York, that added New Leaf managing director Vijay Lathi to the board of directors.

This story originally appeared here

The bridge could not weigh more than 20 ounces.

A team made up of three Assabet sophomores won last weekend’s competition with a bridge that held up 255 pounds.

The competition’s organizers literally ran out of weight to add, Mr. DuPont said.

While the bridge was the focus of the students’ attention, Mr. DuPont, 44, believes there is something much larger at work. He said that the next generation of engineers is being developed in his classroom.

The teacher has his own assignment, with no set due date.

“My goal is to make as many engineers in this world as possible while I teach here,” said Mr. DuPont, who worked as an engineer at EMC Corp. in Hopkinton for 14 years before deciding to teach. “If I turn off one student from engineering, then I didn’t do my job with that student.”

Mr. DuPont’s effort is one of several initiatives under way to address the shortage of American engineers.

The President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness has set a goal of graduating 10,000 more engineering students from U.S. colleges and universities each year. The nonpartisan council includes representatives from various fields who report to the president on how to improve the economy.

In the last 16 years, engineering is the only field measured by the National Center for Education Statistics to see a decline in the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded. Data from the center show that 139,459 students received bachelor’s degrees in computer science and engineering in 1985-86, while 128,318 students received bachelor’s degrees in those fields in 2009-10, the center’s most recent data, a drop of roughly 8 percent.

During the same span, humanities and social science graduates more than doubled. Natural sciences have seen a 65 percent increase, while bachelor’s degrees in business have risen 51 percent.

To counter the trend, the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness has made a commitment together with science and technology leaders to add approximately 6,300 more internship opportunities for engineering students in 2012.

One leader that has chosen to be a major player in the effort is Intel Corp. The company, which designs and builds technologies that serve as the foundation for computing devices, has announced its intention to help raise the number of engineering graduates by expanding its internship program.

Greg Vaccaro, an internship director at Intel’s Hudson facility, was not able to say how many additional interns would work at the 1.3 million-square-foot plant this year, but said the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company is a leader in internship programs.

“We have them roll up their sleeves and jump right in,” said Mr. Vaccaro, 50, an Intel employee for eight years. “By the time they leave, they are full-fledged engineers.”

Efforts to reach potential engineering graduates who are younger than college students are also being made throughout the country. In Massachusetts, 22 high schools, including Assabet Valley, are participating in Project Lead The Way, a national nonprofit that boasts a hands-on science, technology, engineering and mathematics curriculum.

“It’s very project orientated,” said Martha Cyr, affiliate Project Lead director and a professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. “The students that are taking any of the classes are involved from the first day doing project work and understanding how the math and science is relevant to them.”

Project Lead’s high school engineering program features courses that have students work in teams to develop a solution for a task assigned to them. Last year at Hudson High School, students were challenged to construct chairs that were made entirely out of cardboard, and that could support their weight.

“Any project that the kids can get their hands on has a much longer-lasting impact than any theoretical-based discussion,” said Ryan Dailey, the Project Lead contact at Hudson High. “The high school years need to be a point where we can teach these students that there are opportunities for them.”

Mr. DuPont signs up his students for multiple engineering competitions that are hosted by in-state colleges and universities. His students competed in a model bridge competition at Northeastern University earlier this month, the one that motivated his students to put in the extra hours after school.

The team of sophomores — Gary Petrie of Hudson, Wyatt Doyle of Clinton and Adam Rowe of Marlboro — won the prize for having the strongest bridge in the competition.

“I want them to go to these colleges and go, ‘Whoa, this is awesome,’ ” said Mr. DuPont, whose classroom wall displays multiple collegiate pennants from former students who have gone on to study engineering after high school. “They’re talking to current students who are helping out with the competition, they’re getting a real good gist of what college life is all about. It really is a key to these kids going from (high school) to (college).”

If the increased commitment between Washington and technology leaders, such as Intel, to create internships succeeds, Mr. DuPont’s former students would have a better chance at getting an opportunity to apply classroom knowledge to everyday problems that professional engineers face.

“(Internships) help you to see if you really like your major because you actually get into the industry,” said Yura Pyatnychko, a 21-year-old WPI senior majoring in electrical and computer engineering who is an intern at Intel’s Hudson plant. “I get to see what kind of things I would do at an internship, so when I get back to school I have a better appreciation of the things that I’ve learned.”

Intel’s internships also serve as hands-on job interviews for the Hudson plant, which employs around 2,000 people. According to Mr. Vaccaro, one goal of the program is to identify students who would be candidates for a job at Intel after they graduate.

One former intern who earned a post-collegiate job at Intel is Kayla DesPortes, a 2010 Cornell University graduate who is now a component design engineer at the Hudson plant. Ms. DesPortes, 23, said she “had a good idea of what an engineer was” after her three-month summer internship at Intel, and “knew what she was getting herself into” when she accepted the job.

“They’ve got a three-month-learning-curve jump over any college grad that wasn’t an intern with us,” Mr. Vaccaro said.

This story originally appeared here ]]> http://marlboroughedc.com/2012/02/engineering-potential-at-assabet-valley-tech/feed/ 0 http://marlboroughedc.com/2012/02/skinner-to-host-asian-auction-in-marlborough/ http://marlboroughedc.com/2012/02/skinner-to-host-asian-auction-in-marlborough/#comments Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:21:25 +0000 MEDC http://marlboroughedc.com/?p=7978

The “Innovation Economy List” ranked the top ten technology leaders based on a number of criteria, including impact, connectivity and thought leadership. Rhoads was recognized for the size of her organization, the complexity of the industry, her influence on company strategy and her overall visibility. She has served as Raytheon’s CIO since 2001.

Read the full “Innovation Economy List” on Boston.com

This story originally appeared here

The program is a collaborative between the Northeastern University College of Professional Studies and the Massachusetts Association of Vocational Administrators (MAVA). The goal is to have high school education transition seamlessly into the university level so students will be able to maintain college status while at high school. 

Sophomores in the computer programming and Web development program will be the first to have the opportunity to apply for the program. If accepted, they will be considered Northeastern students and will be able to earn college credit throughout their junior and senior year of high school—providing a path toward an associate’s degree in the field and, eventually, a bachelor’s degree.

None of this will cost students or parents anything, as the program is being funded by a grant from the federal government’s “Race to the Top” initiative.

“I am so excited about being able to have our students also enrolled at Northeastern University, but the real thrill is in seeing a major university collaborate with technical high schools.” said Assabet Superintendent Mary Jo Nawrocki. “There will also be academic courses available to the students, but the initial push came from the technical side, and I just find that refreshing, and a validation of what we do here at Assabet Valley on a daily basis.”

This story originally appeared here