Central Community College (CCC) initiated Project SHINE, a statewide educator professional development project, to help address the shortage of skilled technicians.  The idea was to train educators about the needs of energy, biofuels, food-processing and manufacturing in order to help inspire the future workforce. The Project SHINE concept originated from a combination of factors – Nebraska’s low unemployment (the second lowest in the country during the grant period); the disproportionate number of workers nearing retirement age; the current and future workforce demands of Nebraska industries; the encouragement of community leaders; and CCC’s proven experience developing successful collaborative programs such as its Mechatronics Education Center.  The National Science Foundation-sponsored project was also supported by CCC, private business, and the National Fluid Power Association.  The goal of Project SHINE was to engage secondary and college educators in mentor relationships with business professionals, thus increasing their knowledge of advanced manufacturing and ultimately enhancing student interest and participation in high demand technical careers.  In July 2012, this unique design was featured by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in a Report to the President on Capturing Domestic Competitive Advantage in Advanced Manufacturing.

The intellectual merit of the project focused on CCC leveraging its extensive list of existing education, state government, and business partnerships to immerse secondary and college faculty in collaborative professional development experiences with industry.  The broader impacts of the project included the development, presentation, and national dissemination of problem-based learning (PBL) resources by a group of educators, a majority of which were female, and the use of a standardized, state-funded online assessment resource for students of the participant educators.

In the first three years, cohorts of participants comprised of 55 secondary and community college educators from 33 different rural and urban academic institutions throughout Nebraska were competitively selected to be part of year-long mentoring relationships with 23 different businesses in 16 Nebraska communities.  Participant educators were immersed in energy, biofuels, food-processing, and advanced manufacturing environments.  This was combined with hands-on applications of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) at CCC where the educators worked with industrial equipment such as mills, lathes, and presses to fabricate catapults and fluid power arms.  Following these experiences, educators developed well-vetted, interactive lessons aligned to national STEM standards that can be used with a variety of curriculums.  Over the three cohorts, 207 high-quality PBL lessons have been developed and reside in the CCC and, project partner, University of Nebraska at Omaha’s cyberinfrastructure systems.  The modular interactive lessons have been introduced in classrooms of more than 2,000 secondary and community college students.

To measure the efficacy of the project on teaching and learning, CCC partnered with the Nebraska Departments of Education, Labor, and Economic Development to implement different aspects of Project SHINE.  One aspect was Nebraska Career Connections, a website designed by Kuder Inc. and supported by NDE and NDOL.  Students participated in more than 6,900 Kuder career interest and skills surveys.  An annualized aggregation of career interest surveys showed students’ strong interests in both the Manufacturing and STEM career clusters – both clusters were in the top...

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