Building Tomorrow's Leaders: Bridging workforce development in ERCs to meet demand for a skilled workforce

University Of South Carolina At Columbia, Columbia SC

Investigators

Abstract

This project is producing an outcomes-oriented workshop, convened by the University-Industry Demonstration Partnership (UIDP), which will address the challenge of meeting the needs for developing a skilled workforce in emerging areas defined by Engineering Research Centers (ERCs). Since its inception, the NSF Engineering Research Centers program has supported numerous centers that perform high quality R&D - which has led to transformative advances that spawn entirely new technological fields. These thrusts require a skilled workforce at a variety of educational levels, however, existing (as well as graduated) ERCs have been challenged to meet the subsequent growth in demand. The workshop is crafted to assess strategies being employed by current NSF ERCs to meet the challenge of training individuals to work in these emerging areas and make recommendations for ways to bolster these efforts. This workshop is bringing together a strategic set of practitioners and thought leaders from diverse fields who possess the required skills and complementary experiences to evaluate current approaches, extract key aspects of successful programs, and propose new strategies/pilots to meet workforce needs. Effective methods to identify and quantify emerging/acute needs for a skilled workforce in ERC technological areas will be compiled and evaluated. Current and proven domestic and international approaches to meet these demands will be reviewed and strategies for non-federal and federal cooperation will be proposed. The results will be disseminated both in a written report and through participation in relevant professional meetings.