Florida 2016 First annual HTEC Manufacturing Educators Conference a big success. We had over 72 attendees from education , manufacturing associations, education vendors, career counselors and invited guests.  The day began with coffee and morning items provided by the Suncoast Technical College culinary department while everyone go to know each other. The meeting opened with Dr. Todd Bowden, Director of Sarasota county CTE and Suncoast Technical College telling stories about his experiences at our school. Then the next speaker was Mireya Eavey from the United Way and CareerEdge collaborative. Career Edge helped get the STC machining program off the ground after being gone for almost 8 years. Working with the SAMA local Manufacturing Association and president Jennifer Behrens Schmidt, they were able to get grant money and approach the county and Suncoast Technical. In came to life in August 2013. Now we we are in our third year.

Next up was keynote speaker Jeremy Bout from EDU Factor. He spoke for 45 mins. and gave the audience showings of EDGE factor videos. Most of this group had never seen these powerful tools and were all in agreement of how it could be used.

Then we all went into breakout sessions for 2 hours. Tooling U, Cam Instructor, MasterCam educational, Immerse2learn, Verisurf, NCSimul Machine, Highland DNC, Autodesk Inventor HSM, Sandvik, Florida Dept of Education, EDU factor, Southwestern TrakMill, NIMS and more.

Mike Blizzard from Immerse 2 Learn

Jeremy Bout – EDU factor

Then we had a great Luncheon prepared by the STC Culinary Department and paid for by Haas HFO Tampa

We had Dr. Marilyn Barger from FLATE – the Florida Advanced Technological Education Center speak on programs they are working on in manufacturing education throughout the state.

This was followed by a drawing for a HAAS table top control simulator for lathe and mill.

This was won by James McCann representing Pinellas County schools and presented by Ed Doherty STC, Scott Myre HFO Tampa with his lovely wife. The drawing was overseen by Bob Skodinsky

Bob was also recognized by STC Director Dr. Todd Bowden for his work in HTEC and the support that Suncoast Technical College gets.

We all went off into more breakout sessions and shop tours of the STC Precision Machining program & CNC Automation.

Ted Norman from the FL  DOE discussing State of Florida Curriculum Frameworks

 Our classroom and lab was in full swing all day, with projects and production runs of giveaways plus a demo of an EDUfactor project – Sprocket.

The day was a great success and I have been getting personal talks and emails thanking us at STC and HTEC for creating this event. We hope the word will spread so we can share more ideas for next year. Thanks to everyone that attended.

I would like to also thank STC Program Director – Chuck Drake – for his major help. Thanks to Diane Watson – STC, STC Culinary Dept. and students, Bob Skodinsky HTEC , Scott Myre from HFO Tampa, Dave Thomas HFO Tampa for telling me about this job over 3 years ago while I was working at Lockheed-Martin MFC in Orlando.