For every employer competing in the global economy, attracting and retaining the best and brightest talent is a challenge. In response, Ford Motor Company is accelerating efforts to train future engineering, manufacturing, and IT professionals by adding four additional career academies in Detroi, MI.

 

Ford currently has four academies in three locations – Volusia County, FL, Louisville, KY, and Utica, MI.

 

The new Detroit career academies will join the nationally growing Powered by Ford STEM network that Ford is building to help prepare students for jobs in the 21st century, and to meet the growing need for workers in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

 

When the Detroit academies are added, the network will serve 2,800 students. By 2020, Ford expects to have 20 academies serving 7,000 students in cities where the company has assembly plants, as well as elsewhere in the US.

 

As part of the Powered by Ford STEM Academy network, the schools will have access to a range of support, including student scholarships, equipment, mentors for student projects, and professional development for teachers.

 

“The sooner we start we introducing students to STEM the better off we are,” says Cheryl Carrier, executive director of Ford Next Generation Learning.

 

The academies are a combined effort from Ford’s STEM educational programs and its national Next Generation Learning (Ford NGL) initiative. Ford NGL, which was launched by the Ford Motor Company Fund in 2006, provides financial support, coaching, mentoring, and technical support to 20 communities in the US.

 

Academy students attend their regular high school. However, instead of participating in gen- eral classes, the students learn their rigorous, standards-based core academics through projects grounded in engineering, information technology, and manufacturing.

 

For example, students at the manufacturing academy in Jefferson town High School in Louisville learn math and science in the context of issues they would encounter in a manufacturing facility such as Ford’s Louisville assembly plant. The entire community is engaged in developing the plan for their local academy,

 

An important aspect of the academies is that students are engaged in working on authentic projects. “The students work on a project for three or four months,” explains Carrier. It’s an authentic project in that it is something that a business is challenged with. The teacher becomes the facilitator; local business partners become mentors.

 

“Students work in teams to solve the problems, and math and science skills are embedded into the learning,” Carrier remarks. “It’s more interesting and engaging for these students than a regular classroom setting.”

 

The data proves the academies are working. Louisville and Nashville schools have seen graduation rates increase to 78 percent in five years. In Nashville, every single student is learning in an academy structure; Louisville is looking to expand it to all students. The Florida academy right now involves between 30-40 percent of the area’s students.

 

Most communities start with 30 percent of students participating. “Once they see how these students are outperforming the more traditional student, they begin to add more and more academies,” says Carrier. “More are moving to increase academies within their community.”

 

Taking it one step further, Ford is using the academy model to recruit future workers.

 

Ford Motor is no stranger to educational development; founder Henry Ford, a big believer of learning by doing, started 70 technical schools in his lifetime.