The SME Education Foundation will receive $6 million from the state of Michigan as part of the approved School Aid Fund Budget (PA 48 of 2021) crafted with bipartisan support from the Michigan Legislature. The award will double the number of schools participating in the unique manufacturer/educator partnership-driven SME PRIME initiative, which offers education and career-readiness opportunities to high school students.
89% of SME PRIME schools students enter the manufacturing workforce, apprenticeships or pursue continued education.
The number of SME PRIME high schools is set to double after the SME Education Foundation received a $6 million donation from the State of Michigan’s approved Education Budget. The legislation was crafted with bipartisan support from the Michigan Legislature, including Foundation board member and state representative Joe Tate (D-Detroit).
Rob Luce, SME Education Foundation vice president: “SME PRIME schools are central to our commitment of inspiring, preparing and supporting young people,”
Pontiac High School (PHS) was accepted into the SME PRIME (Partnership Response in Manufacturing Education) program in 2020-21. PHS received a grant from PRIME that allowed it to create new manufacturing career pathways for students and purchase state-of-the-art equipment: a three-piece Festo MecLab, a Festo Didactic AC/DC Training System, a Verisurf part tester, a Starrett PMI kit, and a variety of hand tools from Starrett and Snap-on.
This is the first in a series of articles related to the Saginaw (Michigan) ISD’s summer 2021 manufacturing camp.
The Foundation's first quarter saw a 95% increase in scholarship applications with female student applications doubling, minority student applications nearly tripling, and the minority female participation rate increased by a factor of four. Scholarships are central to our mission to inspire, prepare and support young people in their pursuit of manufacturing and engineering education and training.
Made possible through funding from Haribo of America and the Racine Community Foundation, Horlick High School students now have new opportunities to explore career preparation and growth.
Dana Emswiler graduated from the Swanson School of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh in 2021. Her studies in Industrial Engineering were supported in part by scholarships from the SME Education Foundation.
Lindsey Prestholdt received SME Education Foundation scholarships while majoring in mechanical engineering at North Dakota State University. Lindsey plans to join 3M in 2021 as an optimize operations engineer, assigned to process improvement projects while gaining extensive training in areas such as lean manufacturing.