The New Economy Collaborative of Southwestern Pennsylvania announced a $62.7 million Build Back Better grant toward workforce development in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Follow Technical.ly’s coverage of the 11-county project here.
Federal funds from four years ago are still paying off in Allegheny County, helping to prepare the region for the next wave of advanced manufacturing jobs.
One of those programs, new classes at Moon Township’s Robert Morris University (RMU), is not just focused on upskilling. It’s also helping students earn a paycheck while they train to become the next generation of manufacturing professionals.
RMU’s Workforce Development and Manufacturing Assistance program is tapping community members, including military veterans and people that already work for local manufacturing companies, to get the next generation of workers ready for a changing landscape. Around a dozen students are enrolled in this semester’s course, according to Luis Monterrubio, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at RMU.
“We are trying to really increase the level of skills of these participants,” Monterrubio told Technical.ly.
RMU’s engineering department rolled out the first course in its workforce series late last year, focusing on industrial robotics. A second course, centered on programmable logic controllers, the hardware and software systems used to automate machinery, is currently underway.
A final course, focused on collaborative robotics, meaning how humans and robots work side-by-side in industrial settings, is slated to begin this summer.
The courses can be a big commitment, Monterrubio said. They’re taught on Thursday and Friday nights for several weeks, but attendance and interest in the material has been strong.
“Sometimes in college, I’m sure that we are not the only ones, but there are some students that want to finish or pass the course more than the learning,” he said. “Here, students get a certificate of completion, but they seem to be very interested in learning so we increased the number of [training] hours.”
The school is compiling the lessons learned to help more universities do it, too.
“The experience of teaching these courses is going to be written in a conference paper,” Monterrubio said. It’ll be presented this November at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers International Conference in Memphis, Tennessee.
The public sector and universities join forces to maximize impact
Under typical circumstances, a course like RMU’s could cost upwards of $3,000 to $4,000, Monterrubio said. But through the grant, students are being paid roughly $1,000 to participate, earning $18 an hour for around 55 to 60 hours of training.
Last year, RMU was one of nine organizations that received a grant from Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU) Block Center for Technology and Society. The roughly $100,000 award to RMU was used to launch the workforce development courses focused on robotics and advanced manufacturing last fall.
The Block Center’s grants are part of the New Economy Collaborative (NEC) of Southwestern Pennsylvania, an initiative that’s administering $62.7 million in funding from the federal Build Back Better (BBB) Regional Challenge.
The $62.7 million allocated to Southwestern Pennsylvania is just a slice of the broader $1 billion BBB Regional Challenge. Launched in 2021 through the American Rescue Plan, the initiative aims to jumpstart economic recovery from the pandemic and revitalize communities hit hardest by decades of disinvestment, particularly those once dependent on manufacturing.
The NEC is organizing its efforts to deploy the funds through five distinct projects, all involving major players in the 11 nearby counties, including Pittsburgh.
“By supporting these nine projects with funding over the next year, we aim to bridge the gap between innovation and opportunity, ensuring that the region’s workers are equipped to thrive in a rapidly evolving technological landscape,” Ramayya Krishnan, faculty director at the Block Center, said when the awards were announced. “These subawards represent a crucial step in building a resilient talent ecosystem that benefits both individuals and the local economy.”
Read on below for a look inside the classroom and the robots these students are working with.
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