The ATE Center for Advanced Automotive Technology (CAAT)

Abstract

The Center for Advanced Automotive Technology (CAAT) is a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded regional center for Advanced Technological Education (ATE). The mission of CAAT is to provide leadership for a regional alliance of two-year colleges, school districts, and universities, working in collaboration with industry, professional associations and government agencies, to prepare a 21st century technical workforce for the design, development, manufacturing, service and recycling sectors of the advanced automotive industry. The CAAT focuses on Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin and will expand its reach within the Great Lakes region. It aims to meet the growing and evolving advanced technical education needs of current and future technical workers in the automotive industry, a critically important industry across the U.S. and the prominent employer in our region. The identification of emerging automotive technologies - Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEC), Electric Vehicles (EV) and derivatives - enables a vision designed to focus curricular efforts on the areas that will properly describe key relevant technologies and provide adequate flexibility to include new technologies yet to be developed. As a model for educating automotive technicians and technologists, CAAT provides leadership and coordination of curricular reform of automotive technician education programs, integrate advanced automotive technology skills, and emphasize Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education at the secondary and postsecondary levels in our region and other areas in the U.S. with similar needs for newly skilled automotive technicians in a transformed automotive industry. CAAT also serves as a clearinghouse of educational materials and methods related to advanced automotive technology for partners and other interested institutions and individuals. The CAAT is a cooperative effort of education, industry and government to create a regional resource for advanced automotive technologies across the lifetime learning continuum. The two major educational partners are Macomb Community College (MCC) in Warren, Michigan, and Wayne State University (WSU) in Detroit, Michigan. Other key partners include the Southeast Michigan Community College Consortium (SMC3), the Macomb Intermediate School District (MISD), the Michigan Academy for Green Mobility Alliance (MAGMA), the Center for Automotive Research (CAR), and the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). SMC3 is a consortium of nine community colleges in Southeast Michigan that have joined forces to expand the capability of each to deliver shared programs. MISD is CAAT's key partner in reform of the K-12 curriculum, and a state leader in reform efforts for career technical education. MAGMA, formed by Michigan Workforce Development Agency, Michigan Department of Labor, Energy and Economic Growth (DELEG), educational institutions and more than thirty automotive manufacturing employers, is a state supported response to industry requests to increase the local workforce capable of helping create the hybrid and electric vehicles of the future. CAR is the nation's leading provider of economic research for the auto industry, and SAE International, having life-long learning as the core competency, is a global association of automotive engineers and related technical experts. In order to promote awareness of advanced automotive technologies to diverse audiences, CAAT also includes Excel Institute in Washington DC in the program, and collaborates with the NSF funded Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program and the state funded King-Chavez-Parks Initiative University Bound Program. The MCC-WSU partnership was awarded the NSF-ATE grant (UDE 1003032) in June 2010 for establishing the CAAT. The center office and a branch office have been set up in Macomb Community College South Campus and the Division of Engineering Technology at Wayne State University, respectively. Prior to receiving this grant, MCC and WSU have implemented a planning grant (DUE 0802135) to investigate automotive workforce needs, automotive education core competencies, existing automotive education curriculum/pedagogy and advanced automotive future trends, and to select educational and industry partners. This paper describes the rationale of creating an ATE center for advanced automotive technology, the finding of the planning grant, the CAAT goals and objectives, and the center activities, including educational material collection and dissemination, a seed funding program, student summer academies, and faculty professional development. © 2012 American Society for Engineering Education.