Leadership for Manufacturing and Manufacturing-Related Programs

Leadership Capacity Building for Manufacturing and Manufacturing-related Programs aims to build leadership capacity, enable required programmatic changes, and meet NSF ATE program goals using the manufacturing discipline as a ‘common denominator’. The Four Pillars for Manufacturing Knowledge serves as the framework for incorporating rapidly evolving curricular change requirements into the project, beginning with knowledge new to the discipline and carried through to manufacturing and manufacturing-related programs accreditation criteria. Strong leaders from several related perspectives all important to this project are organized to make a collective difference. This project intends to implement recommendations from ASEE’s Innovation with Impact: Creating a Culture for Scholarly and Systematic Innovation in Engineering Education. The strategy, outlined by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers Workforce Imperative: A Manufacturing Education Strategy, is being executed through work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1304391. This paper provides an overview of the project including goals, objectives, activities and anticipated deliverables. It also describes the leadership program model that has been developed based on the work of Ron Bennett and Elaine Millam, and information in their book LEADERSHIP for ENGINEERS: The Magic of Mindset. A summary of baseline data gathered from participants that will inform program improvement opportunities for manufacturing and manufacturing-related programs is incorporated. Additionally, lessons learned by the project team to date along with insights from participants in the 2013 cohort are