This puzzles presents math and technology ideas. From the math perspective the slope of the two plots are the same so the graphs are correctly presented as parallel lines. However, the position of each line is determined by the intercept value on the Ordinate. In this case, the intercept of PP #2 is 3.5 and should cross the y axis above PP #1. In addition, the values on the y axis are not identified but can be deduced. This will allow a segway into a discussion about scaling an axis. (There is not enough information to do that exercise on the abscissa.) From a technology perspective, the negative sign on the photovoltaic data is as expected. This fact will allow an introduction into solar heating panel systems. The efficiency response of solar heating panels goes up with temperature while the efficiency of the photovoltaic goes down. Thus, the puzzle also allows a discussion of the science involved in both technologies.

Are the two plots correctly identified?               No

During our planning grant for our NSF ATE Center of Excellence back in 2002, the FLATE 

leadership team identified the Baldrige Quality System as the evaluation model we would use.  Grounded in industry expectations, based on organizational excellence, and a data driven format were qualities of an evaluation model, which appealed to us and we thought would help us become a successful organization, develop reporting data that was meaningful and reflective of our impact on our stakeholders, and provide a model that our industry partners would know and appreciate. We struggled for a couple of years and were eventually brought back on track by the guidance of Phil Centonze, who now serves as our external evaluator. Many of our Florida based stakeholders know Phil and the impact he has had on manufacturing in our state. However, he has also had a similar impact on our FLATE staff and leadership team, and on our educational partners. One of the pieces of our organizational profile that Phil brought to us is our Guiding Principles, which serve as a basis for reasoning, action and organizational decision-making. They help us decide if opportunities we encounter align with our own mission and goals.  These seven principles have been extremely useful to us over the years, helping us keep our eyes tightly focused on our defining and achieving our goals.  Today, I’d like to focus a bit on the first of FLATE’s Guiding Principles:

The 2012 Florida Energy Summit combined with this year’s annual Florida Energy Systems Consortium (FESC) Summit and took place in Orlando on August 15 – 17. The Summit provided opportunities for the 500 participants (homeowners, businesses, local governments and energy producers) to explore how Florida can secure a stable, reliable and diverse supply of energy, as well as on realistic steps Floridians can take now to cut their energy costs and increase their comfort. 

In keeping with FLATE’s “Year of Manufacturing Awareness” theme, and encouraged by partners to expand Industry Day offerings, FLATE provided an Industry Day multi-tour experience to George S. Middleton High School in order to support the engineering program offered at the Tampa magnet high school. The magnet schoolprograms at Middleton are designed to help students enter career paths in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Since the objective of the magnet programs is to give students a balanced and rigorous curriculum leading directly to industry, technical school, or college programs, making the practical connection between STEM subjects and college and career pathways in engineering technology and advanced manufacturing is a great fit for FLATE’s student tours to advanced manufacturing facilities. Tampa Armature Works, Vulcan Machine, MITRE, Southern Manufacturing Technologies (SMT), and Plasma Therm industries all opened their facilities and provided 67 students with firsthand knowledge about advanced manufacturing careers and the education needed to obtain these careers. 
FLATE’s “Made in Florida” traditional one-site tours are designed to connect classroom-based knowledge to real-world innovation and application, and easily translated into the multi-tour Industry Day event. Roy Sweatman, President of SMT shares that he had received “20+ calls asking about a job in manufacturing from high school students who visited the facility,” and hired a couple for part-time work during the summer. In fact, FLATE research shows a 13% positive change in agree responses from students interested in a career in high tech manufacturing who were surveyed after participating in a tour (3,777 students have participated in tours since 2005). But, we need to do more to ensure teacher and parent buy-in for manufacturing careers since parents and teachers are major career influencers.

One way to aid in this connection is to support school-site “Expo Style” Industry Day events. To aid this initiative, FLATE provided all Florida RMAs with an outreach pack in late December 2011 to be ready for use in 2012. Each pack contained the award winning “Made in Florida” video, copies of FLATE best practice pamphlets for offering summer robotics camps and tours to high tech industries, a postcard size “Made in Florida” promotional handout designed to appeal to students, the new “Hire a Graduate” promotion which networks industry and workforce needs with college programs and their graduates, a resource sheet for online FLATE products and services, career pathways worksheet for students (available online to parents, teachers, career counselors), and annotated presentations which can be used for Industry Day and Industry Expo events. Items were provided as paper copy as well as bundled onto a robot jump drive for ease of access, printing and portability.

After receiving their outreach kit, Marion Regional Mfg. Association (MRMA) referred Suzanne Mills, Director of Human Resources at A & N Corporation, to FLATE for career fair resources. A & N Corp. is a manufacturer of high vacuum flanges, fittings, and chambers in Williston, and Ms. Mills wanted her Career Fair presentation at Williston High School to be representative of the local manufacturing industry. FLATE sent the “Made in Florida” DVD, pencils, FLATERS (FLATE’s robot mascot), and handouts to support this event. Suzanne reported that this event generated “lots of interest.” In fact, A & N Corp. received nine hard applications and over 18 employment inquires from high school students after seeing the A & N display and watching the “Made in Florida” presentation at the March 2012 Williston High School Career Fair.

Do you have an “Industry Day” story to share? We would love to hear from you! Contact Dr.Marilyn Barger at barger@fl-ate.org.

The Florida Advanced Technological Education Center (FLATE) congratulates St. Petersburg College (SPC) for its latest addition. The Collaborative Center for Emerging Technologies (CCET) is the area’s first center for emerging technologies created to reinforce hi-tech education training of tomorrow’s engineering technology, and manufacturing employees.

Brand Jenkins, Dean of Engineering Technology  at SPC and co-PI of FLATE and  Danielly Orozco, Curriculum Coordinator of FLATE.

“The college developed the center in partnership with local employers and industry to re-create a manufacturing factory work environment where students will be able to simulate skills needed in emerging technologies. The Center will specialize in rapid prototyping, additive manufacturing, advanced testing and measurement, nanotechnology and advanced manufacturing processes,” says Brad Jenkins, Director of Engineering Technology at SPC and co-PI of FLATE. In addition, CCET will offer industry recognized certifications including the Manufacturing Skills Standard Council’s (MSSC) Production Technician Certification, Rapid Prototyping and Design Certification, Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Six Sigma Black Belt, and the Computer-Aided Drafting and Design certificate.

From left to right: Brand Jenkins,  Dean of Engineering Technology at SPC, Randy Hanna Florida College Chancellor,  Dr. Bill  Law president of SPC, and Florida House of Representatives Ed Hooper.

Mr. Jenkins together with SPC team worked exhaustively to have the Collaborative Center for Emerging Technologies ready for its grand opening on August 17 at the Clearwater Campus of St. Petersburg College. Guests from all over Florida were present in this great event including the Florida Colleges Chancellor Randy Hanna, and Florida House of Representatives: Larry Ahern, Florida and Ed Hopper.

Special acknowledgement to local employers and Industry business partners for helping transform this dream in reality: Bovie Medical, Cavaform, ConMed Linvatec, Draper Laboratory, GE Aviation, Honeywell, Johnson Controls, Motion South, Raytheon, TSE Industries.  Florida’s manufacturers are a powerful engine for the state’s economy making a huge impact on supporting education and creating more jobs. With a significant number of manufacturers in the Pinellas area, St. Petersburg College will help grow this local employers and industry sector by making sure that people have the right skills to fill the jobs that are open in manufacturing and therefore helping our state economy changing the lives of all Floridians. For more information, contact Brad Jenkins (jenkins.bradely@Spcollege.edu).

    A technician’s assignment is to determine the efficiency of photovoltaic panel systems manufactured at the “we-make-em” alternative energy manufacturing facility.  The data collected from these pilot plant studies are arranged as ordered pairs.  One of these two values is the voltage measured from the photovoltaic panel while the other data point is the value of the temperature of the panel.  The technician knows that the voltage values from each of the two photovoltaic panels involved in this pilot plant study is linearly dependent on the temperature.  The technician determined the model equations for these two different photovoltaic panels to be:

(a)  Photovoltaic Panel #1  (PP #1) model equation:  (volts) = -2.0 (temperature) + 2.5
(b)  Photovoltaic Panel #2 (PP #2) model equation;  (volts) = -2.0 (temperature) + 3.5

For the final report, the technician is preparing a graph of these two plots.  The current graph preparation stage of the two plots is shown below.
                                                                                                                                                                               
1) Are two plots are correctly identified?   Yes or No


Submit your answers below the blog post, or on https://www.fl-ate.org/.

It’s hard to believe that summer is almost over. Here at FLATE we just completed five amazing weeks of  robotics camps at the Hillsborough Community College (HCC) Brandon campus, and three equally awesome weeks at the Institute of Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) in Ocala, captivating the minds and hearts of middle and high school students, and providing them with the tools they need to start building their dreams. We hope many of them will be STEM dreams and STEM futures. Some of those will eventually find their way into great jobs supporting manufacturing companies in Florida.

Regardless of their individual career choices, a STEM-oriented summer camp experience is a great place to start planting some of the seeds needed for student success. Encouraging and supporting exploration, creativity, perseverance, problem-solving strategic thinking, teamwork, and healthy competition in the context of “STEM technologies made friendly” is what FLATE’s robotics camps are all about. One smile, one “yes!” can melt hearts as well as tell us that we are on a right track. What could be better than this?

The foundation of student success can be fragile. It might start in a single class with a dynamite teacher, a meaningful mentor, nurturing family, inspiring role model, or personal drive. Our jobs, as “responsible” adults, parents and community leaders, are to try to provide as many opportunities for our children to be inspired and awed by something in the world they live in. We never know when, where, or what will be ‘the’ spark that’ll inspire them to reach for a strong, meaningful and healthy future. To that effect the camps gave each participant a chance by supporting their interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

In this issue of our FLATE Focus, we want to celebrate student success in just a few of its many forms: large or small, public or personal, individual or team-based. Each marks success and each one deserves our applause. Our Regional Manufacturers Associations (RMAs) support student success by raising money every year to support post-secondary education scholarships for students going into manufacturing career pathways. Fund-raising is not always easy, but these organizations—some big, some small—work very hard to support education. We applaud the RMAs along with their scholarship winners across the state in an article this month. The article highlights scholarship winners’ plans and dreams for their STEM futures that will support modern manufacturing in Florida. Graduation is a notable “success” milestone, and you can check in on two of our spring 2012 engineering technology degree graduates who are now ready and eager to go to work for our manufacturing stakeholders and partners.

We certainly celebrate our Florida high school students who have worked incredibly hard to earn their MSSC (Manufacturing Skill Standards Council) Certified Production Technician (CPT) credential. It’s an incredible feat for young high school students. It is also speaks volumes about their teachers who place high premium on this industry validated credential and have taken the extra time to prepare students for this success. The MSSC CPT—says out loud that they are “ready-for-work” in manufacturing companies. A big YES goes to their success.

On a smaller scale, we have over 100 middle and high school students “successfully” completing robotics challenges in FLATE summer camps. We are hoping that some of them discovered their spark and are now motivated to pursue a STEM career pathway. Switching gears, you can measure your own success by checking your answer to last month’s STEM puzzle. Were you successful? Regardless, no matter your geographical location, I’d like to thank all educators for encouraging and acknowledging student success.

Industry certifications occupy an important role in validating relevant skills-set of employees across various industries. The Manufacturing Skill Standards Council (MSSC) is an industry-led, training, assessment and certification system focused on core skills and knowledge needed by the nation’s front-line production workers (Source: MSSC USA). FLATE recognizes the importance of industry aligned programs, and has embedded the MSSC Certified Production Technician (CPT) certification as part of the technical core for the two year A.S./A.A.S degree in engineering technology (ET).

The FLATE-created ET degree has served as a vehicle for students as well as incumbent workers across Florida to get industry certified. Since the implementation of the ET degree in 2007, 461 high school and technical school students, as well as community college and incumbent workers have been MSSC certified. Additionally, between 2011-2012, ninety three students at Lakewood Ranch High School (LRHS) in Bradenton, FL, took at least one of the modules of the MSSC Certification test. Out of the 93 students, 79 students earned at least one certification in either safety, or manufacturing; 64 students earned at least one certification in safety and manufacturing; 64 students earned at least two certifications in safety and manufacturing. Thirteen students took all four tests, passed it and earned their CPT certification.

Michelle Todoroff, career advisor and industry certification coordinator at LRHS says “industry certifications not only help prepare students for careers,” but also add an additional skill set to a student’s resume which ultimately makes him/her more marketable. To date 30 LRHS students have taken all four MSSC modules. Out of these, 15 (two in 2011; 13 in 2012) have earned their CPT certification.

Marion Technical Institute (MTI) in Ocala, FL is yet another high school that offers MSSC CPT to its

 students. To date, 150 students enrolled in the Production Design Academy have attempted at least one module of the MSSC CPT certification. Most have passed the safety module, with four earning their MSSC CPT certification in 2011-2012, and five more students expected to earn their CPT next year. Dale Toney, production and design teacher at MTI says “these certifications are huge for secondary students as it puts them in a really advantageous position of having college credits right out of high school.”

Other high schools in Florida that have taken the lead on getting students industry certified include Manatee Technical Institute in Bradenton (MATI), East Lake High School (ELHS) in Tarpon Springs, and Treasure Coast High (TCHS) School in Port St. Lucie. To date, 91 students from MATI, 29 from TCHS and 13 from ELHS have earned their MSSC CPT certification. Given the considerable edge it gives to high school students, the MSSC certification has the potential to certify millions of production workers with industry recognized standards/credentials. Under this system, new and incumbent workers who pass the four manufacturing-related modules (manufacturing processes and production; quality assurance; maintenance awareness, and safety) can be awarded the CPT certification.

The MSSC CPT certification is also embedded into the FLATE-created engineering technology A.S./A.A.S technical core that allows students to earn 18 credit hours that can be applied towards a four year degree in engineering technology. The certification combined with FLATE’s ET degree and Automation Production Technician program for high school students ensures Florida has a high-skilled workforce prepared to work in advanced manufacturing and high-tech industries. For more information on MSSC certification and/or FLATE’s ET degree contact Dr. Marilyn Barger, executive director of FLATE at 813.259.6578/barger@fl-ate.org. You can also visit https://fl-ate.org/projects/mssc.html, and https://madeinflorida.org/engineering-technology-degree.