Ohio University receives grant to promote and train rural students for advanced manufacturing and STEM careers

Ohio University has received a grant from the US Department of Education via its Rural Postsecondary Economic Development initiative. The grant, totalling $2,022,519, will fund the project the school has titled Optimizing Navigation for Rural Advanced Manufacturing Pathways. The goal of the project is to increase the number of students in the rural Southeastern Appalachian region who become interested in STEM careers and enroll in education programs to pursue careers in advanced manufacturing and other related fields.

According to an article on Ohio University’s website,  Eric Stinaff, who is a professor and chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, explained the need for such a project and the gaps that it will fill in the region. He is quoted as saying, “There are a lot of job openings in advanced manufacturing in the region, and employers are having a hard time filling them. Manufacturing is much different today from what it was years ago. There is a very large need for workers in these areas.” He added, “We are trying to test if we have career navigators focused on these areas….what kind of impact will they have.”

The project has three main components which are aimed at fulfilling the project’s main goal to promote more interest and the pursuit of STEM and advanced manufacturing education and careers in the rural Appalachian region of Ohio. One component is to fund a new “career navigator” position to work with high schools in Fairfield and Belmont counties to provide career information, aptitude and skill testing, and apprenticeship and internship opportunities with advanced manufacturers in the area to help students gauge their interests and abilities in the field as a career. Another component is to provide academic advising related to ASCENT pathways, which can lead students into semiconductor work. The third component is to form connections between the institution and various manufacturers in the community to lead to experiential learning opportunities for students.

The project is a collaborative effort between Ohio University and Belmont College, involving several departments and individuals at Ohio University, including the Russ College of Engineering and Technology, the Patton College of Education, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service.

Jacqueline Yahn, who is a principal investigator on the grant project and is an Associate Professor of Middle Childhood Education, explained that the collaborative nature of the project is going to be instrumental to its success. She said, “It is really special that we can do this. I just can’t say enough about it. Everyone on his project is leveraging each other’s skills to benefit kids in this region.”

Yahn’s role in the project is to study the career navigators and the efficacy of the tools they use, such as the aptitude tests. Then, Yahn and her students will follow a subset of 10th grade students for the next four years to see their choices about higher education and their careers after receiving this information from the career navigators. Additionally, Yahn will collect information from family members of these students for a fuller picture of the students’ lives and options, as Yahn notes that family and friends play a significant role in a young person’s choices.

“We know in rural education research that family members, parents and caregivers, often have a significant influence on the career pathways that individuals choose,” she said, going on to add, “We saw this as an opportunity to not just fill this gap of knowledge for the ASCENT program, but also a known gap in the empirical literature. There is a need to know this well beyond the Appalachian region of Ohio, but these dollars will really help us close to home.”

While the project involves focusing on individual students and the information they are presented and the choices they go on to make, the collaborators are hopeful that it will point to ways that the region as a whole can benefit.

“One big goal is to make this area attractive for new industry. We are hoping that Southeast Ohio will look attractive to them,” said Stinaff. 

For more information about Ohio University, visit the school’s website.