TRANSFORM: TRANSFORMing liberal arts careers to meet demand for advanced manufacturing workforce
Unlike technical majors such as engineering, unemployment among non-technical majors is high; 8.9% for Social Sciences and 9.4% for Liberal Arts graduates. Unemployment or underemployment of a high percentage of these recent college graduates is problematic for the economic vitality of our nation. These students do not contribute to the nation’s economic growth through either their intellectual skills or their spending power.
In this project, Northeastern University and MassBay Community College are collaboratively implementing an innovative TRANSFORM model to retool the skill set of liberal arts college graduates to prepare them for careers in manufacturing. The project is enabling the targeted population to step into the advanced manufacturing jobs that otherwise go unfilled due to shortage of qualified job seekers nationwide. The TRANSFORM program is also increasing the awareness of manufacturing careers among members of underrepresented groups. NSF Award #1407160. [Ibrahim Zeid (PI), Claire Duggan (Co-PI), Sagar Kamarthi (Co-PI)].