Skip to main content

Additive Manufacturing Career Guidance for All

Photo of a young adult working with a laptop and 3D printer

Project Name
AM Jobs

Project Description

Together with America Makes, CAST is working with educators and industry partners to create a free digital resource to attract individuals to career pathways in the additive manufacturing industry, or the production of items using 3D printing methods. America Makes is part of the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining and one of 16 Manufacturing Innovation Institutes designed to ensure a strong domestic advanced manufacturing innovation ecosystem. “AM Jobs” will be an innovative career guidance tool to provide educators and students in middle school, high school, and adult education programs with a means to understand the many careers possible in additive manufacturing and to align their talents and interests with those careers. This project will leverage CAST’s experience designing curriculum and education technology across educational, professional, and community settings to create a flexible resource that can be used by individuals and groups from diverse backgrounds and varying stages of life.

Providing exposure to a range of career opportunities for students within and outside of the classroom is important to ensure all students can understand what types of jobs exist and how they might apply their interests and abilities. Students and adults alike will benefit from the opportunity to learn about and understand additive manufacturing in order to make clear and informed education and career choices in the industry.

This tool will be made fully accessible through the application of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles and methods. Accessibility is a foundational component of UDL—specifically referenced in the UDL Guidelines—and serves as an essential element of each of the three core UDL principles: providing multiple means of engaging in challenging tasks, multiple ways of acting on and expressing knowledge; and providing multiple representations of information in different formats.

Timeline

August 2022 – December 2023

Funders & Partners

America Makes
National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining

Project Leadership

Sam Johnston, Principal Investigator (PI), CAST 
Josh Cramer, Co-PI, National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining, America Makes

Contact

For more information about this project, please contact Monica Pascoa.

Top of Page