Education
In order to develop the best-prepared candidates for employment at the NNSA national labs, QCAM strives to promote hands-on learning opportunities in AM and quality control for both undergraduate and graduate students.
One unique activity of QCAM is the Annual QCAM Summer Workshop hosted by NTU. The main goal of the workshop is to offer students an immersive and enriching two-week hands-on experience, equipping them with essential knowledge and skills in the rapidly advancing field of additive manufacturing (AM). The students get to work with state-of-the-art equipment and under the guidance of experts in AM. This workshop is an amazing experience for students and instructors. We also invite representatives from all three national lab QCAM participants: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Kansas City National Security Campus, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The representatives then have the opportunity to introduce their respective laboratories and extend invitations to the students to consider launching their professional careers at the labs. As QCAM's primary mission is to cultivate a highly qualified and capable workforce for the National Nuclear Security Administration laboratories, this interaction has proven to be immensely beneficial in aligning students' aspirations with potential future opportunities.
QCAM also endeavors to educate by…
Leveraging partnership with New Mexico Alliance for Minority Participation (New Mexico AMP) funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to work with QCAM to enhance undergraduate research activities.
Increasing highly skilled students with multi-disciplinary knowledge of AM, NDT, sensing, data processing, and machine learning.
Engaging students from mechanical, industrial, and electrical engineering departments in a single research team to enhance the students' soft skills in teamwork and prepare them to work in a team of engineers with multi-disciplinary knowledge.
Engaging graduate students in R&D with DOE industry/labs through co-advising
Due to the ongoing trend of increased demand for Distance Education programs, one primary focus of QCAM’s educational component is centered around developing fully online course modules and courses. We work to enable academic and laboratory partners to share their knowledge of AM and promote cross-university collaboration in order to increase undergraduate and graduate program enrollment for AM, and professional development. Besides the traditional college student, we foresee this to also allow scientists & staff at NNSA national laboratories/industry partners to enroll in these advanced courses/programs as they are working. As such, all three partner universities will develop several online learning modules & online courses in AM, which may include but are not limited to recorded lectures, videos, book sections/chapters, notes, etc. I
QCAM’s online educational goals include…
Broadening the impact of QCAM by extensive use of online platforms (e.g. distance education), preparing curriculum for Online MSe in AM.
Enabling multi-university course development (potentially MSIPP cross-consortium) and engagement of students from multiple campuses in a single course.
Engaging labs in course development using distance education platforms.
Leveraging the NMSU, NTU, and PVAMU distance education programs such as the Center for Instructional Innovation and Technology Services (CIITS) to develop high-quality online courses.Engaging undergraduate students in R&D in projects defined by labs and create lab-student interaction in these projects.