When he was younger, Dylan Presley wanted to be a professional athlete. Then he wanted to be a lawyer. Now that he’s 18, he wants to become a computer or electrical engineer.
“It’s fun every year,” says Lance Lu, data scientist at Mantech, about serving as a judge at the SkillsUSA Additive Manufacturing Competition, held every June in Atlanta in conjunction with the annual SkillsUSA National Leadership & Skills Conference (NLSC).
Exhibitor participation in SME’s Bright Minds Student Summits, hosted alongside SME manufacturing conferences and events, not only helps students, it’s also beneficial to exhibitors.
Working directly with customers isn’t something students normally get to experience in high school classes.
When Carlos Aleixo Domingues, now 23, was in high school in Porto Alegre, Brazil, he had no idea what the world of engineering looked like.
Trent Trout, computer integrated manufacturing instructor at Saline High School (SHS) — an SME PRIME (Partnership Response in Manufacturing Education) school — was taken aback recently when his former boss strode into his classroom followed by a group of cheering coworkers.
A partnership between the SME Education Foundation and Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation (MEAF) is helping enrich the manufacturing talent pipeline by providing scholarships to neurodiverse students.
Training employees and customers on its products has always been an important part of the organizational ethos at Rollomatic, a Swiss-based manufacturer of precision grinding machines that was founded more than 30 years ago.
Natalia Esparragoza, a manufacturing engineer at the Jacksonville State University (Jax State) Center for Manufacturing Support in Jacksonville, Alabama, felt it was her calling to review scholarship applications for the SME Education Foundation.
Students at Proviso West High School, in Hillside, Illinois, have earned thousands of manufacturing certifications, taken top prizes at industry competitions and been placed into local apprenticeships since their school was awarded an SME PRIME® (Partnership Response in Manufacturing Education) program in early 2022.