Collaborative Research: Building a Next-Generation Technician Workforce for Advanced Manufacturing and the Electric Vehicle Supply Chain

This project will strengthen America's competitiveness by preparing technicians for advanced manufacturing and electric vehicle (EV) supply chains. These fields are central to domestic manufacturing, energy security, supply-chain resilience, and technological leadership. The project will create a training model for technicians who must use production systems, battery technologies, automation, digital tools, and quality processes. It will connect two-year colleges, four-year colleges, industry partners, and credentialing organizations. Broader impacts will include stronger pathways into high-demand careers, education-industry partnerships, trained faculty, microcredentials, and instructional resources for national use. The goals and scope of the project will be to identify workforce needs, develop and test an industry-responsive curriculum, strengthen partnerships, pilot a scalable learner pathway, and build faculty capacity. The project will use surveys, focus groups, interviews, learner data, instructor feedback, and independent evaluation. It will develop technical modules and employability modules covering EV supply chains, logistics, smart factories, digital twins, quality and compliance, recycling and recovery, and workplace skills. The intellectual merit will come from advancing understanding of how digital learning, digital twin simulations, credentialing, and industry partnerships can improve technician education at scale. The curriculum will be tested with learners and refined using evidence from implementation. This project is funded by the Advanced Technological Education program, which focuses on the education of technicians for the advanced technology fields that drive the nation's economy. 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.