Mass Bridge

A community college program designed to train the next generation of talent to meet industries’ needs for today and beyond.

Two male students at desk with laptop and engineering model

Talent is one of the most pressing issues in manufacturing today.  According to the National Association of Manufacturers, there will be an estimated 2.1 million manufacturing jobs unfilled by 2030. This impacts our country’s economic stability and our national defense. In response to this great need, MassBridge was created, a thoughtful and scalable approach to develop the next generation of talent in advanced manufacturing. 

School Benefits

  • Free curricular resources (rubrics, performance assessments, and a playbook to outline the process of bringing the Bridge to your school) 

  • Access to national research conducted by MIT on Workforce and Career Skills, and Benchmarks of Best Practices in Manufacturing Training Programs

  • Access to Educator Professional Development Opportunities

Request Access to Free Curricular Resources

Program Background

The Massachusetts Center for Advanced Manufacturing (CAM) identified an industry need to develop a training program that standardizes student outcomes without standardizing curriculum across our diverse community college system. To accomplish this, we: 

  • Researched what industry is projecting as the skills and competencies for the next generation of workforce; 
  • Pushed those skills into community college advanced manufacturing programs throughout the state; 
  • Developed a common language and rubrics to define and evaluate what mastery of these skills and competencies look like within the context of a class; 
  • Created Common Embedded Performance Assessments (CEPA’s) that allow our educators throughout the state a measure to determine curricular efficacy and student mastery; and
  • Supported faculty in their professional growth, their program implementation, and marketing of their programs. 

As a result, we developed a process that can be adopted by any college or college system to ensure that the skills and competencies needed by this industry can be pushed into any existing advanced manufacturing curriculum.

Reports

Read the following reports to gain an understanding of the workforce development needs, strengths, and weaknesses of each manufacturing sector within Massachusetts:

Manufacturing Workforce Skills Reports

Benchmarking Advanced Manufacturing Education