COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- An ongoing effort in South Texas to better prepare advanced technology technicians has been recognized for excellence by the Texas Association of College Technical Educators. The South Texas Advanced Technology Education (STATE) project, headquartered at Del Mar College, received the President’s Award for Excellence 2004 for Best Practices in Technical Education at the association’s conference in Corpus Christi April 1-2. The project’s principal investigator, Dr. Lee Sloan, and director, Dee Salmon, accepted the award plaque along with Del Mar’s acting president, Jose L. Alaniz. As part of the award, Salmon and Sloan will present the program during the general session at the TACTE fall conference in Austin. The STATE program, which is administered through the Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), aims to reduce the time required to produce associate degreed technicians, chiefly in process technology, in response to industry’s rapidly evolving training needs. Funded by the National Science Foundation for $1.5 million, STATE is a partnership of five community colleges -- Del Mar, Victoria, South Texas, Coastal Bend and Texas State Technical College - as well as Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, TEES and more than a dozen industry partners that include companies such as Flint Hill Resources LP, Valero Refining, BP Chemical and Equistar. "STATE opens the door to high technology careers for the underrepresented and largely Hispanic South Texas population and provides industry with a highly skilled workforce," said Sloan, who is dean of occupational education and technology at Del Mar. "This award acknowledges and affirms the efforts and contribution of everyone involved with the project." More information about the STATE program can be found at http://www.delmar.edu/state. The Texas Association of College Technical Educators is a professional organization that serves to promote the needs of postsecondary workforce education throughout the state, to promote collaboration and cooperation among educational providers and to assist in providing professional development for technical educators.