Technician Future of Work Issues Caucus for
Florida Community Colleges and Manufacturers
(NSF ATE #1939173)
The goal of the Future of Work Caucus for Florida Manufacturing Technicians Project is to identify Industry 4.0 technologies in Florida’s small- to medium-sized manufacturers that directly contribute to Florida’s technicians’ skills gap. The project will first survey both manufacturers and 2-year college educators in Florida about future technical skills that will be used in manufacturing environments.
The project first conducted 2 surveys of manufacturers and educators to define the skills that support the Industry 4.0 technologies in their companies and their 2-year manufacturing programs. After data review and aggregation, the results were presented for discussion and prioritization.
Next steps include further data analysis and validation and development of a skeleton job description for the manufacturing technician. A second virtual Caucus will be held in the spring of 2021 to validate the information from the first Caucus and define steps for implementing changes in the educational and training programs.
This project was funded by the National Science foundation Advanced Technological Education (NSF-ATE): Grant # #1939173 which is a partnership of FloridaMakes, FLATE a part of the FloridaMakes Network, the College of Central Florida and the University of South Florida.
View NSF’s “Future of Work for Manufacturing Technicians” Caucus Session 2 (Archived)
The March 5th session built on the first meeting. The information and input from the first Caucus session (October 15, 2020) was added to the questionnaire responses and we began the analysis of the combined data. Listen to the Recording
Project Resources:
Caucus 1 Pre-Read Files:
Related Resources:
- Presentation at American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) 2020 Conference Proceedings Paper and Presentation
- NSF ATE Principal Investigator Conference Presentation
Industry and Colleges Responding to the Survey
