LIFT Picks Team of Educators to Examine College Curricula
The initiative will engage educators and manufacturing scientists to ensure instruction prepares students to deploy the latest lightweighting technologies, materials and processes.
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Lightweight Innovations For Tomorrow (LIFT), the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) has named six educators to its Expert Educator Team (EET). The EET will collaborate with LIFT’s technology project teams to identify how colleges and universities can modify their curricula and related industry certifications to develop the knowledge, skills and abilities workers will need for jobs deploying the new lightweighting technologies, materials and processes being developed by LIFT.
The EET includes:
- Fazleena Badurdeen, director of graduate studies in manufacturing systems engineering at University of Kentucky
- Amy Clarke, associate professor and site director with the Center for Advanced Non-Ferrous Structural Alloys, Colorado School of Mines
- Chad Duty, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering, University of Tennessee Knoxville
- Muhammad Jahan, assistant professor at Miami (Ohio) University
- Gene Liao, professor and director of electric-drive vehicle engineering and alternative energy technology at Wayne State University
- Kelly Zelesnik, dean of engineering, business, and information technologies at Lorain County Community College
In addition, the team will be led by Jim Woodell, vice president for economic development and community engagement at APLU, and Rebecca Taylor, senior vice president at NCMS.
“The key to developing a workforce with the skills employers are looking for is closing the gap between the information and technology taught in the classroom and the advanced technology being deployed by industry,” says Emily Stover DeRocco, education and workforce development director at LIFT.
The EET will begin its work at a kickoff meeting in Detroit with LIFT’s technology project leaders.
NCMS will co-lead the Education Expert Team and provide input as the largest cross-industry collaborative research and development consortium in North America, researching commercial, defense, robotics and sustainable manufacturing.
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