Assessing School-to-Career Pathways for Manufacturing in Rural Communities: Further Investigation of Advanced Manufacturing Programs in Northwest Florida

A subset of manufacturing, the advanced manufacturing (AM) sector is defined using two criteria: high levels of spending for research and development (R&D) and a high share of STEM jobs within companies. In northwest Florida, AM employment is concentrated in two sub-sectors (3259-Other Chemicals and 3344-Semiconductor) and in 2015, constituted 24.6% of the region’s total employment [1, 2]. Guided by the overarching research question (RQ) “To what extent do curriculum content, employer needs, and student experiences align within an advanced manufacturing educational pathway,” this study’s goals are to 1) investigate the role AM program pathways have in meeting the needs of employers and new professionals who are employed in the region; 2) expand the research base and curriculum content recommendations for entrepreneur and intrapreneur education; 3) build regional capacity for AM program assessment and improvement by replicating, refining, and disseminating study approaches through further research, annual meetings with the AM employer and education community, and an academy which lead state college and university researchers, in collaboration with educational organization, to empower rural NW Florida colleges. Acknowledgements: This material is supported, in part, by National Science Foundation grant