The SMART Center: Creating the Next Generation of Credentialed, Skilled Technicians for the Maritime and Transportation Industry

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The Southeast Maritime and Transportation (SMART) Center stands well-poised to increase the pipeline of educated, credentialed technicians working in our country's vitally important maritime and transportation industry. The SMART Center will build on work to change students' and educators' perception of the maritime and transportation industry and the educational pathway leading to highly-paid, highly-skilled careers. Increasing industry leaders' awareness of the potential to build a more highly-qualified and credentialed workforce will catalyze partnerships between employers and colleges. Increasing the number of veterans, women, first-generation college students and under-represented minorities is the first goal of the proposed work. Connecting educators to employers through the SMART Institutes will increase the number of students enrolling in and completing academic programs to become credentialed technicians.The SMART Center's four high-level goals are:Goal 1: Career Awareness -- Increase career awareness by replicating and teaching career pathways to produce a greater number of increasingly diverse students entering the maritime and transportation industry pipeline and exiting with academic and industry-valued credentials.Goal 2: Identifying Industry Standards for Curriculum -- Expand the SMART Center digital repository of industry competencies linked to courses and credentials embedded in registered apprenticeship and building related pathways in maritime logistics and emerging maritime-dependent offshore industries.Goal 3: Professional Development -- Deliver scalable models of industry-validated professional development built on existing partnerships, including expansion of the SMART Institute model, to create a network of SMART educator-ambassadors.Goal 4: Partnerships -- Model effective industry and educator partnerships to maintain national focus on maritime and transportation industry workforce needs and to influence formation of federal, regional and state policies and pathways to meet those needs.The SMART Center will scale the SMART Maritime Technologies pathway built on the registered apprenticeship model which incorporates in-demand industry certifications and academic courses that confer college credit toward degrees. Work will include adaptation of successful SMART Center career pathway tools to each of the four maritime transportation industry sectors: (1) shipbuilding and ship repair, (2) seagoing/vessel operations, (3) marine logistics/port services, and (4) emerging maritime-dependent offshore industries. The SMART Center will build a replicable education model for the emerging maritime-dependent offshore wind energy industry by identifying competencies needed for academic and industry credentials and creating relevant courses.