FLATE’s Executive Director Discusses the Role of Innovation in the Workplace

On November 9, 2017, FLATE partnered with the Gus A. Stavros Center for Free Enterprise and
Economic Education at the University of South Florida (USF) to present a workshop focused on the role of innovation in the workplace for all members of the workforce. The workshop program was entitled “Design Thinking and Decision Making: Creating the Entrepreneurial MINDSET Students Need to Succeed in the Global Economy.” A panel of six of FLATE’s Tampa Bay industry partners shared how and why their companies encouraged creativity and innovation for all employees and what businesses in the 21st century expect from all workers. The panelists started with brief introductions about themselves, their companies and products they make, or services they provide to industry. Following those introductions, the 30 plus K-12 educators from the Tampa Bay region eagerly quizzed the panel members about what their students could expect in the modern workplace, how much and how they used 3D printing, and how employees work together. They also asked for tips on how to help students acquire these kinds of skills.

All the panelists emphasized that employees, up and down the company’s organizational chart
are expected to contribute to “continuous improvement” by thinking “outside the box” and finding solutions to both simple and complex problems. Students from a young age should be encouraged to take the “tools” they learn in school and apply them to new situations, new problems, and new ideas. The session went on for nearly 90 minutes with panelists encouraging the educators to challenge students to be inventive, take their students out into the workplace, bring employers to the classrooms, and to keep talking with different employers and employees. After the panel session, the Stavros Center team shared a number of resources for educators on design thinking that could be easily incorporates into their classrooms. Information on these resources can be accessed here.

In their session evaluation forms the educators raved about the energy and passion expressed by all the panel members. “This has been one of the BEST workshops I have attended! Every panel member and speaker had some perspective on innovation and creativity that will fit every grade level,” was just one of those very positive comments. We definitely appreciate the panelist sharing pieces of their everyday work lives with these teachers.

For FLATE, educating all K-12 teachers, especially the non-STEM teachers is an important recruitment strategy. Most teachers who are not in STEM fields know little about STEM occupations and careers, or the growing number of opportunities that will be available for their students for high-skill, high-wage STEM careers including those in manufacturing. Arming these teachers with real world information, contacts and examples helps them to provide real education and employment options to their students.

FLATE and the Stavros Center are now planning to take this workshop “on the road” to bring
manufacturers to teachers in other Tampa Bay counties next spring with the same focus on innovation in the workplace. The mission of the Stavros Center is to advance the effective teaching and integration of free enterprise, financial literacy, and economic education into the K-20 curricula. The Stavros Center is now in its 38th year at USF. FLATE’s mission as an NSF-ATE Regional Center for Advanced Technological Education, is to be the go-to organization for manufacturing and advanced technical education, best practices and resources supporting the high performance skilled workforce for Florida’s manufacturing sectors. Together we are working help teachers better prepare today’s students for the future. For more information on FLATE and its extensive array of professional development and curriculum resources visit the FLATE Wiki and the Made in Florida website, or contact Dr. Marilyn Barger, executive director of FLATE at barger@fl-ate.org/813.259.6578.

I now invite you to read the rest of the stories in this special holiday edition of the FLATE Focus. Don’t forget to take a stab at cracking this month’s special “#RudolphEdition” of the sTEm puzzle! (Spoiler Alert: It’s hilarious!) We’d love to hear from you so be sure to drop us a comment below the blog post(s), or connect with us socially on Facebook and LinkedIn, or Tweet us @Made_InFlorida using the hashtag of the month #IndustryEducationPatnerships. From all of us at FLATE have a holly, jolly Christmas and a very Happy, Healthy and Prosperous 2018!

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From the Executive Directors Desk:Daytona State College’s Statewide Articulation for ASET to to BSET

FLATE’s mission includes providing meaningful career and educational pathways for the advanced manufacturing industry sectors. This includes the entire spectrum from introducing young children to “making” to post baccalaureate STEM degrees, with our sweet spot the middle of the spectrum where we find high school students, post-secondary students in 2-year technical programs and/or technical institutions. As educators, we know the value of education for both personal and professional growth and always encourage students to consider continuing their education to support that growth. Obviously, it becomes easier to do this when we have smooth pathways that optimizes both their education and their experiences.
To this end, we developed credentialed-based articulations to the A.S. Engineering Technology (A.S.E.T.) to give full credit for a number of credentials thereby accelerating the time completion. This pathway model has been adopted in many disciplines and at many college across the nation. Now in 2017 I am excited to share the work done at Daytona State College (DSC) to establish a statewide articulation for all A.S.E.T. graduate in any of the 10 specializations at over 20 state and community colleges to the B.S. Engineering Technology (B.S.E.T.) that will go into effect early in 2018. This sounds like a “no-brainer” because there are many smooth “2+2” Associate of Arts (A.A.) to Bachelors of Arts or Science (B.A. or B.S.) degree. However, technical degrees for which the main focus is prepare students to enter specific technical jobs upon completion not necessarily to continue to a bachelor’s degree. Additionally, there are critical criteria that must be met for baccalaureate degrees that are set by institutional accrediting agencies, state governing boards, and discipline-specific accrediting organizations (in the case for Engineering and Engineering Technology, that organization is ABET (https://www.abet.org/). These degree attributes are not inherent with in our community of 20+ state and community colleges offering various combinations of A.S.E.T. specializations using over one hundred academic courses. Defining an agreement that would accommodate all variations truly represents a work of both art and engineering.
The A.S.E.T. is a 60-credit hour degree with 15 hours of general education and 18 hours of introductory level technical courses and 27 hours of more advanced technical course. The B.S.E.T. will require a total of 128 hours, including all 60 earned in the A.S.E.T. The B.S requires 11 more hours of general education courses (for a total of 36 hours) and 48 hours of upper level technical courses. The remaining hours can come from either lower or upper level technical courses and generally include some pre-requisite courses for the required B. S.E.T. math and physics courses. Faculty in the A.S.E.T. programs can help students who are considering the B.S.E.T. to take some of those pre-requisite courses as electives during their associate’s degree. Naturally, the student can always be told to just take more courses, but this is not our approach. A seamless transfer for each student from A.S. to B.S. is the goal.
An additional challenge, and perhaps magic for (for those of us who live in education domain is the fact that the B.S.E.T. at DSC can be taken remotely with online and hybrid courses. The hybrid courses have four options for completing the hands-on lab exercises: 1) Complete the exercises at Daytona State in the college labs; 2) Purchase a lab kit for the course sold through the Daytona State bookstore; 3) arrange to do the lab portions at the local A.S.E.T. degree-offering state or community colleges; or 4) arrange to complete the lab activities at a workplace with a designated proctor.   This generates many degrees of freedom for students but all of these options support efficient pathways to the B.S.E.T. degree.
Although several A.S.E.T. programs in Florida already have defined specific articulation agreements with the B.S.E.T., the new statewide agreement will allow all students who have earned their A.S.E.T. degree in Florida to continue their ET education seamlessly at DSC. The B.S.E.T. is ABET accredited, and completers are eligible to get their Professional Engineer (PE) License once the candidate meets traditional and additional criteria of having a PE sponsor and a number of years work experience in the field under a licensed, practicing engineer.
Interested in the B.S.E.T. degree, please contact Dr. Ron Eaglin at Daytona State College (eaglinr@daytonastate.edu). If you want to learn more about the A.S.E.T., contact Dr. Marilyn Barger, Executive Director FLATE (mbarger@hccfl.edu) or visit our ET Degree colleges webpage on www.madeinflorida.org

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Mechatronics /Automation Education on the move in Florida and Around the Country

COLLABORATE SOUTHERN WORKING CONNECTIONS WORKSHOP FOR MECHATRONICS

The spring and summer of 2017 have been full of “mechatronics” activities for FLATE and our partners not only in Florida, but also across the country. July was a highlight with a 5-day workshop for high school teachers hosted by Florida State College at Jacksonville (FSCJ) which is one of the co-PIs of the CollaborATE, NSF ATE project awarded to the College of Lake County, IL in 2016. This incredible grant project has developed the first stage of a “low-cost” mechatronics trainer (under $1,000) intended for high school manufacturing, mechatronics, automation programs. The three partner colleges (College of Lake County (CLC), Ann Arundel Community College (AACC) and (FSCJ) are implementing associate degree programs in mechatronics, by enhancing and updating existing electrical, mechanical and/or electromechanical programs to include the now ubiquitous communication systems that have become integral to all automated systems.

In addition to upgrading the degree programs at the three colleges, the project PI’s are working with their local high schools to develop articulated pathways and/or duel enrollment programs. To support the high school programs involved (3-5 per college), the grant team will complete the development of the high school mechatronic trainers in three stages. Each summer during the grant, the partner high school teachers are traveling to FSCJ for an the intensive 5-day workshop taught by Tim Callahan, mechatronics instructor at AACC. This summer the workshop focused on wiring and programing programmable logic controllers (PLCs). The next two years will have the same high school teacher return to continue the training adding more complicated subsystems that include motors, mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic components.

The 11 high school attendees rated the “Southern Working Connections” as excellent and could not wait to get access to the first stage of the trainer that they worked with this summer. The trainers will be loaned to the teachers from grant colleges so teachers can continue to work with them during the coming school year and use them with their students. All of this year’s participants are expected to return the next two summers to continue to learn more advanced applications. Margie Porter, CLC CollaborATE PI, was very excited about how very engaged the teachers were in their work and how excited the teachers were to have focused time with hands-on learning in mechatronics. She says “they are hungry to learn and eager to have access to equipment. We are hopeful that this intensive strategy will help build enrollment in both high school and college programs.” FLATE participated in the workshop, mentoring the teachers in their work and making lunchtime presentation on various resources, recruiting females, and industry credentials. For more information about the Mechatronics Community in Florida, contact Dr. Barger (barger@fl-ate.org).

MECHATRONICS /PLC WORKSHOP at HI-TEC

The week before the Mechatronics Southern (SWC) Working Connection in Jacksonville, FLATE hosted half-day Mechatronics workshop at the HI-TEC Conference in Salt Lake City. Partnering with Dan Horine from Virginia Western Community College and the NSF ATE PACE-ME grant and Doug Laven from the South Central College (MN) and the NSF ATE iMEC grant project to present the workshop. These two experienced mechatronics educators led the eighteen attendees through wiring, troubleshooting, programing basic commands to solve fundamental problems. Wiring the hardware allowed participants to trace the communication flow through the system.

The growing need for mechatronics and automation technicians across the country and in an array of industry sectors including manufacturing, supply chain, energy, utilities, aviation and aerospace, chemical processing, continues to attract students into these high skill, high wage careers. This was the third year this team presented a PLC focused mechatronics workshop at HI-TEC. With one, or two persons per trainer, this workshop “turned theory into reality” said one attendee.

Continue reading on our Wiki

From the Executive Directors Desk: Articulating Industry Credentials in Florida

This summer, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO) and the Florida Department of Education (FL DOE) added several NIMS (National Institute for Metalworking) credentials to the state’s secondary school funding list. We are excited to have these new additional acceleration pathways for students in manufacturing career programs. Anyone who holds these current NIMS credentials can get credit towards several 2-year degree programs including the A.S. degree in Engineering Technology that supports Florida’s manufacturing industry sector. This is great news for students in all the high school and post secondary machining programs that earn NIMS credentials in those programs. Ed Doherty, Precision Machining Lead Instructor at Suncoast Technical College in Sarasota says “This will provide a great pathway for some of my students considering an Associate’s degree. I can’t wait to share the opportunity with them this fall. There are always a couple grads from my program that want to continue their education.” Other credentials that validate knowledge and skills that have previously been approved for statewide articulation include credentials for 3D modeling and design, electronics, quality, sheet metal fabrication, composite materials, welding, aviation maintenance, and more.

FLATE and its partners proposed the very first statewide articulation with the Manufacturing Skill Standards Council (MSSC) Certified Production Technician (CPT) to the A.S. Engineering Technology in 2007. FLATE has worked closely with industry since then to be sure that Florida students and people in the workforce that wanted to continue their education in manufacturing could get credit for skills and knowledge they already had. In Florida, industry credentials articulate for up to 15 credits towards technical degrees, providing credit attained for prior learning based skills documented by credential-offering organizations. The long established robust system in Florida started with the Career and Professional Education Act (CAPE) in 2006 and has expanded to include workforce credentials for post secondary level. Additionally, the CAPE Act also brings performance funding to all participating institutions. You can learn more about the A.S. Engineering Technology Degree and its system of stackable credentials and certification alignments at https://fl-ate.org/programs/stackable-credentials.

The State of Florida’s Office of Articulation at FL DOE has a mission to facilitate effective and efficient progression and transfer of students through Florida’s K-20 education system. Articulation processes provide acceleration opportunities for students to complete post-secondary degrees (A.A., A.S., or Bachelors level). There are basically two methods. First, students can earn credit by taking a test through which a student successfully shows mastery of the material by achieving the defined passing “cut score”. These tests can be taken at any number of nationally and/or internationally recognized assessment centers for academic, or career courses and/or programs. The second acceleration method is Dual Enrollment. This process allows secondary students (including home school student sand students with disabilities) to take post-secondary coursework and simultaneously earn credit toward high school diploma, career certificate, an industry certification, or an Associate or Baccalaureate degree at a Florida public, or private institution. There are many resources including agreement templates, guidelines, approved credential lists, etc. on the FL DOE webpage: https://www.fldoe.org/policy/articulation/.

Several other supporting policies support Florida’s educational pathways. Common course numbering in all postsecondary institutions, statewide articulation agreements, common prerequisites, and general education core all facilitate smooth transfers between secondary and post-secondary institutions. In the world of Career and Technical (CTE) Education, the State Board of Education has approved the listed statewide Career and Technical Education Articulation Agreements, which are based on industry certification. These articulation agreements provide a minimum guarantee of articulated credit an institution can elect to grant additional credit based on local agreements. The process of adding credentials to the statewide list is illustrated in the table below.

These FLDOE process are subject to current Florida statutes and rules.

I now invite you to read the rest of the articles in the July edition of the FLATE Focus. In this edition we have a story about the NEW A.S.ET degree in Alternative Energy at Florida Keys community college. We also have a round-up of the 2017 Robotics Summer Camps season, a spotlight on the 2017 FLATE Awardees as well as upcoming events like the Manufacturing Day 5K Run Walk Paddle for Education. We’d love to hear from you, so do reach out to us via email at news@fl-ate.org and/or connect with us socially on @Made_InFlorida  on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Tweet us using the hashtag of the month #2017FLATEAwardees that recognizes their valuable contributions to Florida’s manufacturing education and training.

From the Executive Director’s Desk: 2017 Florida Sterling Manufacturing Business Excellence Awards

 

The Florida Regional Manufacturers Associations (RMAs) met last week at the 25th Annual Florida Sterling Conference. The conference is recognized as one of the best in the nation for practical learning in all areas of leadership and management systems. The RMA’s half day meeting and workshop was facilitate and hosted by FloridaMakes. FloridaMakes is a public private partnership supported by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) within the Department of Commerce with the mission to strengthen Florida’s manufacturing companies. The meeting focused on values and strengths that could be shared and leveraged amongst the associations to grow their organizations. Association directors, business advisors, and current officers worked and networked with one another together and with the FloridaMakes staff. Summaries of strengths and action items will be distributed and the RMA’s will use them for focus topics at their monthly conference calls.

FLATE works closely with the RMAs for community and educational outreach and provides

information about the manufacturing educational programs at High Schools and State/community colleges in their areas. This new and evolving community of Florida’s RMAs will be yet another integral part of Florida’s manufacturing ecosystem and therefore be linked tightly to our ET Forum, community of colleges offering programs that offer the ET degree. FloridaMakes and the Florida RMA’s are critical partners in FLATE’s sustainability plan as the key organizations to continue FLATE’s work to build a sustainable talent pipeline within Florida’s Educational system. This work includes outreach activities like student tours for MFG DAY, providing professional development for STEM educators and working with the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) on curriculum development, review and credential alignment to keep the school and college programs focused on preparing the manufacturing workforce.

Many of the workshop attendees stayed for an evening reception for the first ever Manufacturing Business Excellence Awards (MBE). This rigorous Award system starts with company nominations, which are open to all Florida’s manufacturers from anyone. All nominees are asked to submit a small portfolio of facts and figures. All companies that submits a complete portfolio have a screening call with a panel of judges and examiners. The 30-minute screening call leads to some being recommended for half day site visits. The sit visits narrow the field to the finalists in categories in company size groups. A single lead judge, Mr. Phil Centonze, organizes the calls and site visits and manages the volunteers for each call and each site visit. Eventually, over 40 judges and examiners worked on a three hour conference to review the results of the site visits to recommend the finalists and, ultimately the winners. FLATE was there to celebrate with many of their manufacturing partners from around the state that were finalists in one of the four 2017 categories. All are winners and will enjoy increased statewide exposure and feedback from the review process to continue to improve their businesses. I am pleased to share the winners with our FLATE readership!

From the Executive Director’s Desk: #MFGDay17 is ON

Wow – As of today, May 3, we have just 156 days, or 23 weeks, or 5 months until Manufacturing Day/Month 2017! We still have the end of spring, all of summer and start the fall season. But MFG DAY is such a big event in Florida, we all know that now is the time to start planning for 2017 events. There are many MFG DAY/Month events in Florida, but the focus today, and for FLATE and its network of statewide partners has and will always be on student industry tours. In looking back post manufacturing day/month data, MFG DAY/Month in Florida has experienced exponential growth, both in the number of tours and statewide uptick in participating and enthusiasm to participate in this national event that celebrates the spirit of innovation and excellence in American manufacturing/manufacturers. Even last year, when Hurricane Matthew’s unscheduled visit to Florida last on October 2 closed nearly 80% of the schools in Florida, most tours were re-scheduled and more students and educators than ever experienced manufacturing first hand across Florida.

FLATE’s statewide MFG DAY/Month efforts began in 2013 when we developed the “recipe, a streamlined strategy and targeted techniques” that outlined an approach to organizing regional student tours for middle and high school students to high-tech manufacturing

facilities across the state. We had been doing industry tours for students for several years and had documented a significant impact on students. FLATE’s strategy for conducting Manufacturing Day tours on a single day was geared to amplify the effort, the effect, and the impact of industry tours on ALL participants, and also increase exposure and excitement in Manufacturing/STEM related opportunities in the community. FLATE started with the idea that we wanted LOTS of student tours on the first Friday of October (MFG DAY) and planned to schedule others on different days to accommodate companies and schools. We understand industry tours are challenging to set up, execute and assess. Looking at the challenges, we developed the techniques to address some of the most challenging obstacles. Here is the list we brainstormed:

• Working with local/regional school districts in getting student permission forms signed and turned in!

• Tour logistics (lots!) that included pairing schools with industry partners, funding and arranging buses/transportation with local/regional school districts, working with manufacturers to provide food for tour participants

• Providing debrief time for Q &A at manufacturers

• Getting manufacturers to sign up as industry hosts

• Devising a survey strategy to survey ALL MFG Day participants from students, educators, parents to industry tour hosts in capturing feedback and tabulating surveys for each of the regional manufacturing partners

• Getting kids interested

• Ensuring impact

• Continuing the conversation afterwards and all year round

• Engagement from all participants would help provide maximum impact. Additionally, our recipe included commitment from all participants and some supporters.

• School districts (or individual schools) would provide bus transportation

• Companies would host student tours, provide giveaways, and student lunches

• Professional organizations would support giveaways and student lunches

• FLATE would provide manufacturing education resources (lesson plans, tour tips, posters, etc)

• FLATE would develop, distribute, collect, aggregate, analyze, and distribute survey data

• FLATE would help coordinate and work with regional tour coordinators

From The Executive Director’s Desk: Don’t do it alone: “Get your partner and …”

Last month, the NSF ATE-funded Centers Collaborative for Technical Assistance (CCTA) presented a webinar named “Developing Stakeholder Partnerships Internally and Externally for Successful Grants.” I participated with two other Center directors for both the webinar and a follow-up online question and answer session with participants who wanted to dig in deeper. Some important summary points surfaced as an end result of this Q&A experience:

(a) when starting to consider working together for common goals, it’s important to stop and consider why partnerships and collaboration are desirable, needed and important. Remember that good partnerships can grow into working collaborations; (b) when approaching new, potential partners you may want to develop a script AND possibly send a hand-addressed letter (not email).

In all situations, however, before engaging in any way, it’s critical to be fully prepared. Here are some “to do’s”: (1) have a clear and concise “ask” – (know what you want); (2) learn what you can about the potential partner especially where your missions overlap (the working space); (3) define concrete benefits for each; (4) be prepared with alternatives; and, (5) take the lead in all follow-up communications. In summary, when starting the conversation, remember that all good and strong partnerships have the following common characteristics.

Partnerships typically have specific goals, deliverables and, possibly, metrics. Good partnerships are strong and can deepen with time if they are successful in making progress towards or achieving the common goal. Partnerships goals can be extended and expanded with time often making it possible to achieve much more than any one partner might be able to accomplish alone. Ultimately, partnerships require “high-touch” relationships.  When they reach this level, partners that continue to have overlapping interests and goals, may become true collaborators. Collaborators work in and with each other although both parties may not benefit from an activity, but happens to have the expertise.

Although the CCCTA webinar and the follow up Q&A session was focused on developing partnerships in the context of existing or potential grants for educational institutions, the fundamental elements and characteristics of partnerships are universal are good practices – no matter what the context. Our partnerships are typically among Industry interest in hiring skilled technicians and include, but are not limited to the list below:

• Trade Organizations
• K-12 and University Educators
• Other ATE or TAACCCT Projects
• Scientific and Professional Organizations
• Non-profits
• Educational Organizations
• Government Agencies
• Certification Boards
• Foundations

Last month’s webinar was the third in a four-part series about writing a successful grant proposal for NSF Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program. The other webinars have tips for adhering to the requirements of the program; defining measurable outcomes and strategies to be sure those outcomes are evaluated and measured. These are all important issues, but proposed work in this area cannot be done alone! The ATE program is grounded in partnerships to grow the 2-year advanced technology technician workforce in the United States. Qualified, talented advanced technicians that also meet employer’s needs is ATE’s high level goal.

The webinar’s recording offers many rich examples of various internal and external partnership situations and just how these work in the “real world”. It also explores just how to get partners to “commit” and what does commitment mean at that stage of a partnership. I recommend that anyone considering submitting a grant to NSF ATE in the fall 2017 review this webinar and the rest of the series early in your proposal preparation phase. The recordings and slide decks can be found on the 2017 recordings here: https://www.atecenters.org/recorded-webinars-2017/.

Good luck in your exploration of partnerships! If you have any questions or ideas, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Here at FLATE, we are proud of our many partnerships and collaborations that exist in a tangled web of complex multilevel relationships as well as singularly focused 2-party, deliberate working partnerships for singular tasks.

From the Executive Director’s Desk: A Focus on Manufacturing Ecosystem in Florida

The manufacturing workforce is a complex network of interconnected systems. Producing that workforce is just one of many complicated subsystems. Four important components of this workforce development subsystem are:

• work-based learning
• internships and apprenticeships
• skill certification
• talent pipeline development

Successful workforce development requires detailed attention to these components of the “talent pool pathway” for manufacturing’s workforce.

Florida’s approach to its manufacturing “talent pool pathway” is to first identify key organizations that can and should participate in this “pathway”. Like in other states, these organizations historically have worked independently in Florida, each paying attention to only selective components of the “talent pool pathway” (the components that are in their own wheelhouse). The challenge is to develop ways to remove this silo effect. In Florida, the responsibilities associated with these immediate foundation “talent pool pathway” duties have been clustered into the Florida University System, the Florida College System, the Workforce Agency and the Department of Commerce’s Manufacturing Extension Service (MEP). Developing an ecosystem environment that houses the manufacturing workforce development elements of these groups is one approach that can morph the silo effect to a synergistic and thriving ecosystem.

The starting transition point for such an evolution is to superposition the four groups together in an innovative space that defines manufacturing workforce development fundamentally containing the four important items above (work-based learning, credentials, internships and apprenticeships, and talent pipeline development).

Initial members of Florida’s manufacturing workforce development ecosystem are FLATE (working for the Florida College System); CareerSource (Florida’s workforce agency) FloridaMakes (Florida’s MEP); and Innovation Station Sarasota (working for the Florida University System). Preliminary meetings with leadership of these four organizations resulted in enthusiastic support for the ecosystem concept. The group determined that the secondary education system was a primary target audience. Essential building blocks for workforce creation include: creation of high school manufacturing academies; face-to-face exposure of secondary students to advanced manufacturing facilities; and relevant professional development of educators about manufacturing skills and careers. They also committed to work together to define specific goals for manufacturing talent development and manufacturing education excellence. Stay tuned for more details in the next FLATE Focus.

I now invite you to read the rest of the stories in the February Edition of FLATE Focus. This month we have an industry spotlight focusing on Nautique, as well as several new exciting additions to the Announcements section of this blog. Please send us your thoughts by emailing news@fl-ate.org or commenting below each story in this blog. Also, please connect with us via social media on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.