Announcing the 2025 Catapult Award Winner: E3 Alliance

Emily Lam
Oct 10
2 min read

Pictured here from left to right: Kevin Fleming (Catapult Masterclass), Sophia Alston (ACTE), Catalina Vasquez (E3 Alliance), Michael Connet (ACTE)

Each year, the Catapult Award honors those visionaries who are reimagining postsecondary education—leaders and programs that don’t just adapt to change but drive it.

This award recognizes innovation that makes learning more relevant, scalable, and aligned with real-world needs, all while embodying the spirit of collaboration, data-informed design, and future-ready skill development.

“The Catapult Award celebrates educational visionaries who are redefining learning to meet the needs of a rapidly evolving world,” says Catapult CEO, Dr. Kevin Fleming.

This year, the 2025 Catapult Award goes to the E3 Alliance for their groundbreaking initiative, Fragmented to Focus. This initiative reimagines career and technical education (CTE) as a student-centered model, transforming education through data and collaboration so all

students can succeed. In partnership with the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), the award was announced October 7th at the national CTE Postsecondary Summit in Austin, Texas.

Tackling Fragmentation in CTE

In presenting the award, Dr. Fleming highlighted several important aspects of E3's work, such as that it "tackles one of the most persistent challenges in career and technical education: its fragmentation."

He went on to remind that the field of CTE has long wrestled with competing definitions of success, as well as misaligned systems where policy, research, and practice have been separate for too long.

Fragmented to Focus boldly bridges those divides.

From Research to Real-World Impact

By systematically reviewing more than sixty-five peer-reviewed studies, the Fragmented to Focus initiative exposes the conceptual gaps that limit CTE’s coherence and impact.

This collaborative research initiative stands out for its bold, evidence-based approach to reimagining CTE not just as a workforce pipeline, but as a student-centered blueprint for systems alignment. This would shift the narrative from deficit-based perceptions of learners to asset-based pathways that recognize their strengths, aspirations, and community connections.

Through their research and regional case studies—like the advanced manufacturing partnerships in Central Texas—the E3 Alliance are modeling how to build unified frameworks that connect education and workforce systems, transform outcomes, and elevate the value of CTE for learners and employers alike.

"Their work reminds us that transformation doesn’t happen in isolation—it happens when data, collaboration, and purpose converge to create meaningful opportunity,” Dr. Fleming concludes.

Congratulations to the E3 Alliance!

Catapult and ACTE applaud the E3 Alliance’s commitment to turning fragmentation into focus and focus into impact. Their leadership and vision embody everything this award and Catapult Masterclass stand for.

Congratulations!