Dr. Bradley Harris (left) works with Cleveland State faculty on how to incorporate the experiential learning/project element of the dual enrollment class.
A historic partnership for the state of Tennessee and the nation is being launched with an $800,000 funding award from the National Science Foundation.
EXPAND TN (Experiential Learning in Advanced Manufacturing towards Novel and Diverse Career Opportunities for Rural Tennessee Students) was successfully proposed by Dr. Bradley Harris, director of the Chemical Engineering program at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
The partnership represents a multi-institutional collaboration between UTC, Cleveland State Community College, and the PIE Innovation Center—a first-of-its-kind workforce development hub, working together with local industry to address an anticipated workforce shortage in advanced manufacturing. Success at the end of the three-year project could lead to replication elsewhere in the U.S.
The initiative will allow at least 120 high school students from counties in rural southeast Tennessee to explore careers in engineering and technology. These students will participate in a six-week, hands-on learning program as part of a dual enrollment mathematics course offered by Cleveland State to high schools in three rural districts, which primarily serve low-income, first-generation students.
Upon successful completion of the dual enrollment course, students from the class can apply for a paid, six-week summer internship with industry partners at the end of the 2024-2025 academic year. These students also will be eligible for college scholarships if they pursue an engineering or advanced technologies degree at Cleveland State or UTC.
“We wanted to partner with Cleveland State because of dual enrollment courses they offer,” Harris said. “They have this workforce development center called the PIE Center, for Partnerships for Industry and Education. It offers certificate programs, workshops and dual-enrollment credit.”
Advanced manufacturing is among multiple emerging technologies identified by NSF—including advanced wireless, biotechnology, semiconductors, microelectronics and more—in its call for proposals. Harris said EXPAND TN focuses on advanced manufacturing because it involves a broader range of local manufacturers.
The experiential learning project involves making a solar energy cell. On July 26, Harris and his co-principal investigator on the project, Dr. Stephanie Philipp, held a “train the trainer” workshop with Cleveland State faculty on incorporating the solar energy cell project into their “Technical Calculations” classes.
Dr. Stephanie Phillip (left)
Those faculty will teach Cleveland State students about existing solar cell technology, potential innovations and drawbacks, along with assembling a cell capable of generating actual electrical current.
Harris explained that NSF is using this funding opportunity to recruit people into the workforce and sectors of the economy they might not otherwise pursue. It’s also not his first experience with an NSF-funded project targeting underrepresented populations.
He was co-principal investigator for ASSETS—or “Academic Intervention, Social Supports and Scholarships for Engineering Transfer Students”—awarded $1 million by NSF from 2018 to 2023 in support of high-achieving, low-income UTC students with financial need. Over its five-year timeline, the project funded two-year scholarships for 28 students and three-year scholarships for eight students.
Two key takeaways from that experience influenced the EXPAND TN proposal, Harris said. One is that Cleveland State courses for future engineering transfer students could be better integrated with UTC engineering curriculum. The other is the need to support a sense of community among transfer students.
“We have a very, very well-oiled machine in students coming from Chattanooga State to here, and the programs they offer have been tailored to UTC’s engineering degrees, but the pathway from Cleveland State to here was a little bit rougher,” Harris said. “Realizing that, I went for another NSF award, a research experience for faculty opportunity that was funded, This is actually our final summer of offering (yearly) educational and research training for faculty in STEM fields from five feeder colleges in the Chattanooga area.
“When it comes to transfer students, we found with the S-STEM (NSF engineering scholarships program) program that community is what they lack the most. As simple as this sounds, we did a few hours of orientation for those scholarship cohorts—and they also had faculty and peer mentors and that was also valuable—and we saw them form connections within their cohort and have a really beneficial sense of community.”
Harris said this most recent NSF funding program seemed an opportunity to benefit from the lessons learned from his experiences with the previous two. He also said he’s learning, since joining UTC in 2015, that he’s increasingly drawn to finding solutions to challenges to student success.
“It’s very important that we pursue breakthroughs in the body of knowledge, and we are,” Harris said, “but the area I find myself to be more and more interested in is what I can do that benefits my students, and how that may ultimately benefit the workforce.”
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