Tampa, Florida
June 15, 2019
June 15, 2019
June 19, 2019
Two-Year College
18
10.18260/1-2--32666
https://peer.asee.org/32666
567
Curtis S. Tenney, MSLS, is a doctoral student with The School of Information at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida and a research assistant at the FSU Information Use Management and Policy Institute. His research passion is focused on the intersections of culture, community, and human information behavior.
Marcia A. Mardis is a Professor and Associate Dean at Florida State University's College of Communication & Information and Associate Director of the Information Institute. Author of numerous publication and recipient of over two decades of federally funded research grants, Dr. Mardis' work focuses on professional identity creation, educational text and data mining, and technician education improvement.
Faye R. Jones is a Senior Research Associate at Florida State University’s College of Communication & Information. Her research interests include STEM student outcomes and the exploration of student pathways through institutional research.
School-to-career pathways not only represent a student’s journey, but they also represent the educational program context; to understand the pathway, one must understand the geographic, political, and social conditions that led to the program’s creation. To determine the kinds of pathways advanced manufacturing (AM) programs in rural Northwest Florida community and state colleges enabled for their students, we interviewed faculty and administrators about their AM programs’ historical emergence. In this paper, we present five detailed AM program “origin stories,” using a multiple case study methodology. These origin stories allowed us to explore how rural AM postsecondary programs have evolved in organizational structure, curriculum content, employer relations, and student pathways facilitation. We gathered data to discern 1) commonalities and unique features in AM programs’ initiation impetus; 2) current AM program, faculty, and student profiles; and 3) significant AM program challenges and priorities in rural settings, such as institutional commitment to long-term economic health. In our findings, we highlight how active participation in diverse community and industry collaborations serves to establish and grow AM educational pathways tailored explicitly for the immediate community. For example, participants share innovative partnership programming and certificate development that enabled seminal two-year engineering technology and engineering technician education opportunities. We also identified that the ability of rural programs to offer instruction in advanced physical spaces requires an ongoing commitment to appropriate resources, support that is variously obtained from the institution, local employers, or some combination of stakeholders. Through our methodology and findings, we aim to contribute to a holistic understanding of how to study school-to-career pathways. This study investigates how rural AM programs can advance to achieve competitive growth.
Tenney, C. S., & Mardis, M. A., & Jones, F. R. (2019, June), Discerning Advanced Manufacturing Education Pathways: Insights from Rural Northwest Florida’s Program Origin Stories Paper presented at 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Tampa, Florida. 10.18260/1-2--32666
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