Manufacturing Technology Curriculum Research And Development For High Schools And Colleges In Washington State.

The Puget Sound Consortium for Manufacturing Excellence (PSCME), a three year project funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF), is a regional educationindustry partnership aimed at enhancing the connection between manufacturing technology education, student career goals, and private sector demand. The goal of the PSCME has been to develop an enhanced manufacturing curriculum for manufacturing technology programs in high schools and in two-year institutions. PSCME works with high schools and community/technical colleges in Washington State to gather and review existing manufacturing curricula, and to communicate with local industry leaders to clarify regionally developed industry skill standards and curriculum needs. This paper will discuss this deliberate cooperation and the resulting development of a new, modularized curriculum model. Based on the curriculum research, 19 modules were developed: Interpersonal Effectiveness, Introduction to Manufacturing, Safety in Manufacturing, Hazardous Materials, Manufacturing Field Trip, Total Quality Management, Statistical Process Control, Applied Mathematics, Interpreting Technical Drawing, Precision Measurement, Manufacturing Planning, Shop Skills, Job Readiness, Labor in Industry, Career Exploration, Computer Applications, Manufacturing Processes, Technical English as a Second Language, and Manufacturing Internship. These modularized curricula have been introduced to regional high schools and community colleges through a series of training workshops sponsored by the PSCME. Throughout the development process, these modules have been evaluated by students and local high school and college instructors. Feedback from the students and instructor evaluations will be discussed.