Developing a Robotics Technology Curriculum at an Urban Community College
Michael Kaye, Liu Yun · 2020
Abstract Developing a Robotics Technology Curriculum at an Urban Community CollegeIt is well recognized that to be globally competitive in the 21st century, the United States mustinvest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) training and education toprepare a technically skilled and knowledgeable workforce. More academic and industrialpartnerships and collaborations that address K-12 challenges, post-secondary curricula, andworkforce needs in STEM related fields must be created and supported to accomplish this. Anurban community college, seeking to be a national leader in this effort, applied for and wasawarded an Advanced Technology Education grant from the National Science Foundation todevelop a Robotics Technology Curriculum. The goals of the grant project are to: (a) develop thecurriculum for a unique robotics technology associate degree program at the urban communitycollege that trains students to be super technicians who are qualified to be hired as robotics,automation, manufacturing, and/or electronics technicians; (b) set up a state of the art roboticslaboratory at the urban community college to offer students an abundance of hands-on, practicalexperience that prepares them for immediate entry into the workforce upon completion of theprogram; (c) increase the success rate of the electronics, computer information system, andcomputer aided drafting & design technician programs at the urban community college byincorporating robotics-related activities and instruction into their curricula; (d) introduce roboticsconcepts to 11th and 12th graders in select high schools in the city’s public school system andimprove their math problem solving skills through hands-on robotics exercises; (e) develop anarticulation agreement between the urban community college’s robotics program and a localfour-year university’s school of engineering for students who wish to pursue an engineering-related bachelor’s degree; (f) provide internship and job opportunities to the robotics program’sstudents and graduates; and (g) improve underrepresented students’ awareness of and attitudestowards robotics technologies. This paper discusses the efforts made towards achieving thesegoals as well as the results and outcomes of the project.