From the Executive Director’s Desk: Manufacturing Institute’s Roadmap for Manufacturing Education Focusses on Industry-Education Partnerships

Recently I attended the day long meeting in Washington DC of the Education Council of
Manufacturing Institute (MI), the 501c3 arm of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) which is the authority on the attraction, qualification, and development of world-class manufacturing talent. The goals of the institute align with those of NAM, and they work closely together to achieve them. The Institute’s goals are to:

• Change the perception of careers in manufacturing
• Re-establish the U.S. as the global leader of manufacturing education
• Advocate for education and job training policies that strengthen the U.S. manufacturing workforce

The Education Council is composed of nationally-recognized education leaders from all levels of education institutions that meets face to face two/three times per year and virtually in between. Council members and their institutions are committed to delivering high-quality manufacturing education and training programs designed to meet the skill requirements of our nation’s manufacturers. FLATE plays active roles at the local, state and/or national level in shaping and promoting policies designed to promote career and technical education, competency-based education, industry credentials, innovation and applied research. The Manufacturing Institute leverages our expertise and networks to expand and enhance its own broad network of education-business partnerships across the county.

At our recent Ed Council meeting, we reviewed progress made to date around the county in implementing the industry certifications in educational programs as well as industry’s acceptance of those. We also reviewed the strong growth in student engagement activities and programs across the country. Bubbling from the many reports and projects is the fact that it is important to engage more industry and engage them more deeply in promoting manufacturing and working with educators. This will become a focus for much of MI’s work in the coming years. Training and educating manufacturing companies’ executive leaders as well as their operations and human resource professionals to understand the shift in the current workforce needs, the challenges of the changing characteristics of rising generations, and the opportunities they have with community and technical colleges across the country.

From the Executive Director’s Desk: A Focus on Work-Based Learning

On Wednesday, February 25, FLATE participated in a half day forum focused on Work-Based Learning hosted by Johnson & Johnson Vision Care (Jacksonville) and sponsored by the National Association of Manufacturers Manufacturing Institute. More than 60 people attended including representatives from the Florida TRADE consortium, state and community colleges, regional industry workforce development and others. The Manufacturing Institute provided some national data about the current and future skills gap for manufacturing. This information underscored the huge need for educated and trained professionals to service the manufacturing workforce in the next decade. CareerSource Florida provided similar information about this skills gap in Florida. Following those brief introductory remarks to set the stage, the audience heard from small and large manufacturers about their needs and work-based learning programs. Allowing that many manufacturers have college programs for engineering and science interns, the conversation quickly turned to the technical workforce below the four-year professionals.

In Florida, the growing complexity of the manufacturing workforce is constantly lowering the technical employment opportunities for unskilled workers.(Opportunities manufacturers relied on for decades.) The focus of the next panels was how to get a simple message to young people that “there are great and exciting skills-focused jobs and careers in manufacturing waiting for you after a couple years of post-secondary education and/or training.” We just have to get students to buy into this fact. Johnson and Johnson Vision Care, a large multi-national company and Metal Essence, a small Florida-based company, related their new experiences with partnering with schools and colleges to provide on-the-job experiences as well as  lessons learned and plans for the future. Most importantly, Al Stimac from Metal Essence summarized the Florida statute that deals with high school students as related to work they can do and the limitations on the number of hours worked without added company investment and liability.

From the Executive Director’s Desk: Taking Care of Business

Last year, FLATE hosted its 11^th annual National Visiting Committee (NVC) in Miramar, FL. Usually these meetings are held at an industry location somewhere in the state. This year, however, we  met at FLATE’s host institution and campus, Hillsborough Community College Brandon campus. The FLATE NVC provides advice, advocacy, assessment and assistance not just at this one strategic meeting each year, but also more informally, during the months in between. We are proud of not only the size of our committee, but also its composition of 12 dedicated individuals with interest in the state of manufacturing technician education in Florida and across the country. A typical one-and-half  to two-day meeting agenda includes a number of standard “sessions” including:

• Reporting and updating on activities and programs during the past year 
• Evaluation report from an external evaluator
• Overview of a local technician program and its students
• Visit to a local industry
• Discussions with the Center’s NSF ATE program officer (typically this is done remotely)
• Closed session for the NVC to discuss concerns, recommendations and plaudits
• NVC report out to the Center Leadership and NSF program officer

From the Executive Director’s Desk: Friends of FLATE-A Focus on Strategic Partnerships

FLATE will best achieve its mission in partnerships among other organizations locally,
regionally, statewide, and nationally.  We have active and ongoing partnership projects with a number of organizations – some big, some small, some narrowly focused and others crosscutting.  We use our FLATE guiding & operating principles to help determine if and how we should engage with other groups. We want our partnership projects to be richly meaningful, mutually beneficial to all involved and broaden FLATE’s impact on manufacturing education, outreach, professional development, and to strengthen our intellectual merit.  Our partnership projects have defined tasks, deliverables and projected outcomes that we would like to achieve.  FLATE also has non-specific project partnerships with a number of organizations.  These organizations have shared mission and visions, and we call on each other for events and activities which also have mutually compatible goals. You can read more about our current partner and partnership projects on our website at https://fl-ate.org/partners.