Calhoun Community College and the University of Alabama in Huntsville signed an Advanced Manufacturing Memorandum of Understanding. The partnership creates a seamless transferable career path for Calhoun students to transfer to UAH.
Calhoun opened the Alabama Center for Additive Manufacturing Excellence in 2019, which is a division of Auburn University’s program.
The school also partners with General Electric, Huntsville City Schools, NASA, and UAH, who assist in curriculum development.
“As the only educational institution in the state of Alabama to offer an Additive Manufacturing Design degree, one of our goals was to collaborate with our ACAME partners, said Nina Bullock, Technologies Department chair and Design Drafting Technology instructor.
While elements of manufacturing and design are regularly taught in classes at Calhoun and at four-year universities, the interaction between students trained in different fields is currently lacking.
“This agreement not only offers a solution that spans cross-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary, but also with multi-disciplinary techniques for remediation,” said John Holley, Calhoun dean of Technologies.
The proposed plan has four main objectives: to team students from the associate’s program at Calhoun with bachelor’s-degree students at UAH on capstone projects that incorporate advanced manufacturing as part of the design realization; to engage graduate students in development of modules for incorporating into existing classes to connect engineering concepts with the demands of the industry’s environment; to install advanced instrumentation on existing equipment to support research efforts into certifying components; and to offer a series of short courses for local industry to disseminate the latest trends in additive manufacturing.
The diverse, inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary approach proposed will provide a direct pipeline of future employees to support Alabama industry from Alabama colleges and universities.
Click here to learn more about Calhoun’s Additive Manufacturing Design Degree Program.
