Pivots: Reskilling Education Via Advanced Manufacturing Practicum

Recent technological advances have left manufacturing industries struggling to upskill current or find new employees at a sufficient pace to keep up with new developments. The Reskilling Education Via Advanced Manufacturing Practicum (REVAMP) project aims to support these industries by helping traditionally underrepresented populations in STEM pivot into successful careers in manufacturing. In particular, the participants will be those who have some background in STEM, but, due to experiencing major life events, have either remained unemployed for some time or require upskilling to work in this sector including veterans, new Americans, and stay-at-home parents. Each cohort will be trained in various aspects of professional development and advanced manufacturing through hands-on learning modules over a summer followed by 30 weeks of practical work experience with local manufacturing companies. By providing technical and core skills, the project will aid in filling this need for manufacturing that will exist both locally and nationally for the foreseeable future. The median operational date for many investments in new manufacturing and decarbonized industrial capability is approximately 2025. In total it is expected that these new manufacturing activities will create over 50,000 jobs just within a day’s drive of Cincinnati. Therefore, it is critical to the Great Lakes and Upland South regions of the U.S. to redouble efforts to reskill a manufacturing workforce within the next five years. The REVAMP project aims to assist in this effort. The project structure will follow Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory as a framework and the content topics to be covered include sustainability, additive modalities, and computational tools. The project evaluation data and analysis will help to elucidate how experiential learning creates and informs pathways for individuals seeking upskilling to work in advanced manufacturing and determine the barriers to participation and the resources necessary for participants to have a transformative experience. This project aligns with the NSF ExLENT Program, funded by the NSF TIP and EDU Directorates, as it seeks to support experiential learning opportunities for individuals from diverse professional and educational backgrounds to increase their interest in, and their access to, career pathways in emerging technology fields. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.