The project, a partnership involving Edmonds Community College, Everett Community College, Cerritos College, and St. Louis Community College, is creating specialized certificate programs in advanced manufacturing to train a new generation of manufacturing technicians. The project focuses on the skills needed by future technologists as well as those who are presently working in the industry. The team is developing, teaching, evaluating, and disseminating educational programs offering advanced manufacturing certificates specializing in aerospace, medical devices, consumer product, communications, marine, and transportation. These programs utilize a variety of nontraditional delivery options while implementing effective student recruitment and retention efforts that ensure entrance into and completion of such programs. Multi-media instructional tools are integrated with current theories of cognition and learning to immerse students into a multi-dimensional learning environment thereby optimizing and accelerating the learning process. Peer-to-peer and problem-solving roles required in the culturally diverse manufacturing world of today are also being emphasized through the use of virtual teaming and real-life scenarios. A key success factor is the integration of skills between various disciplines, including advanced materials and manufacturing, computer-aided-design modeling, and enterprise teaming. Dissemination is proceeding through several mechanism, including a project website, conference presentations, journal publications, training workshops, and promotion through appropriate clearinghouses such as the New Jersey Center for Advanced Technological Education (NJCATE). The training workshops, which describe the innovative curriculum and its various adaptable delivery methods, are being offered to college instructors and industry trainers at partner locations throughout the U.S. The program is building on a strong foundation of partnerships with education and industry and has an oversight committee that is made up of representatives from partnering companies. The evaluation effort, led by an independent evaluator, will use surveys, focus groups, data tracking, and other assessment tools to monitor progress toward the project's goals, to assess student learning, and to characterize the project's impact on recruitment and retention of students from underrepresented groups. The broader impacts of the project arise from the development of teaching methodologies that prepare employees for the changing manufacturing environment in a large number of geographical and product areas, the workshops that prepare other community college instructors and industry trainers to use the new instructional material, and efforts to recruit women to careers in advanced manufacturing.
