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A Future-Ready Workforce Innovation Consortium will be one of the first partnerships between Syracuse University and Micron, Chancellor Kent Syverud announced in October.

Through the program, the College of Professional Studies will provide training and education — including collaborations with Micron — for students to prepare them for entering the workforce. The university still has no concrete plans for whether it will run out of SU or the facility or when it would begin, according to a statement from SU.

The partnership, which will include several academic courses and skills training, aims to eventually branch out to areas beyond the SU community, allowing regional community college students as well as veteran-serving programs to participate, the university statement said.

“There’s a lot of opportunity to take what is being taught in various courses, and repurposing them in either non-credit form or in some sort of different format,” said Dr. Arthur Thomas, executive director of the office of professional accelerated microcredentials in the college. “That allows people from the community to access these skills and knowledge from all these different areas.”

The training will prepare students specifically for the advanced-manufacturing industry through lessons on semiconductor production, including topics such as information technology, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and machine learning. The consortium may also delve into careers such as marketing, management and design.

“With Micron’s investment, this program will expand the recruitment and support for diverse faculty whose research and teaching will prepare the workforce for the future,” Syveruud said at the event.

SU’s Institute for Veteran and Military Families will also work with Micron in another initiative to help the company achieve its goal of hiring more than 1,500 veterans over the next two decades. The IVMF will work to train veteran students in the skills needed for jobs at Micron and related roles, according to an SU press release.

Thomas said the university’s partnership will reach beyond just SU and Micron to impact the surrounding community’s development. Accessibility to important resources is a key goal of the partnership, he said.

“We (will) offer the programs and credentials that are most needed by Micron employees to succeed in their work and to also provide a pathway to people who don’t have those credentials to get them somehow,” Thomas said.

Published on November 15, 2022 at 12:30 am

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