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MassBay Students Partner with Local Company to Bring Real Life Solutions to Advanced Manufacturing

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

WELLESLEY HILLS (August 24, 2016) – MassBay Community College is pleased to announce that three Advanced Manufacturing students have recently participated in a manufacturing engineering project with industry partner SMC Ltd. located in Devens.

Students working on this project are part of the first TRANSFORM cohort and are fulfilling their internship requirement for the Advanced Manufacturing Technology certificate program. TRANSFORM is a one-year certificate program in Advanced Manufacturing and is a collaborative project between MassBay and Northeastern University with support from the National Science Foundation. The goal of the project was to create and implement an innovative curriculum model to future develop the skill sets of students in order to prepare them for careers in manufacturing. The program enables students to be trained and workforce ready for advanced manufacturing jobs that would otherwise go unfilled due to the shortage of qualified job seekers nationwide.

SMC Ltd. is a leading contract manufacturer in the medical device, pharmaceutical and diagnostics markets. As a part of SMC’s support of technical education, they provided a work scope to challenge students to provide a “real life” manufacturing solution. The solution involved consideration for working within a clean room environment, remaining compliant with OSHA standards, and manufacturing safety. Brian Traylor of SMC Ltd. has mentored the MassBay student team; Mehdi Rostami of Waltham, John Minasidis of Wayland and Joseph Grenier of Northborough who were led by Northeastern Ph.D. student Mahsa Oroojeni to design an optimal solution for a project related to equipment in the new facility. The student’s work was compensated by a TRANSFORM National Science Foundation ATE Collaborative research grant.

The student team toured the SMC Ltd. facility to collect data on the equipment and materials, and to learn more about the work scope expectations of a project plan. The team used SolidWorks software to create and design solutions.

The student team will unveil the final design solution to SMC Ltd. at a presentation on Friday, August 26th at 2pm on the Wellesley campus.

“This is a big deal for MassBay since industry partners are coming to us knowing our students are ready for a challenge,” said MassBay Associate Professor and Chair of the Engineering Department Marina Bograd. “The company is offering the opportunity for our students to work on projects that take place within an actual manufacturing environment. It's a win/win scenario for both the company and MassBay. It allows our students to gain experience working in a team environment on a real life project. In turn, the student has a better understanding about the curriculum they are learning and how it is tied into what industry is looking for while putting newly attained skills to use immediately.”

The TRANSFORM program is funded in part by a National Science Foundation ATE Collaborative Research: TRANSFORMing liberal arts careers to meet demand for advanced manufacturing workforce grant #1406741, a $20,000,000 grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment, and Training Administration Grant #TC-26450-14-60-A-25, and STEM Starter Academy (SSA).