NCNGM Upcoming Participation in HITEC Conference, Austin, TX, 2026.

The photograph is titled "Austin, Texas Cityscape Evening Skyline" and is credited to Panoramic Images.

The National Science Foundation (NSF)- funded National Center for Next Generation Manufacturing (NCNGM) is proud to be an Executive-Level Producer of the HI-TEC (High Impact Technology Exchange) Conference, taking place in Austin, TX, this year. Our Director and Principal Investigator, Karen Wosczyna-Birch, will be present at various activities, including preconference workshops and special interest groups, as well as the luncheon panel with other NSF ATE Center Directors. NCNGM leadership partners will also participate in panels and workshops with their own organizations and institutions. You can meet our leadership team and students at the NCNGM Booth, where you can sign up for our Community of Practice, learn about the activities the NCNGM supports, and browse our website's catalog of upcoming events.

HITEC Agenda activities are available on the High Impact Technology Exchange Conference website.

Preconference:

WORKSHOP: Incorporating Emotional Intelligence into Your Courses Led by John Birch, CEO, The Birch Group, in partnership with the National Center for Next Generation Manufacturing. A recent Manufacturing Institute report noted manufacturers across sectors indicated a need for employees with emotional intelligence because it relates to teamwork, productivity and motivation. This workshop will provide an overview of emotional intelligence, which is one’s ability to understand and apply our overall emotional well-being to facilitate high levels of collaboration and productivity. This workshop is included in several NSF ATE funded programs for students and educators. Participants will complete and analyze their own emotional intelligence and learn interactive lessons to use in their classrooms. These lessons will help students through both their educational, personal, and career journeys.

SIG: Next Generation Manufacturing Led by Karen Wosczyna-Birch, Executive Director & PI, National Center for Next Generation Manufacturing. The 2026 Next Generation Manufacturing Special Interest Group (SIG) will focus on preparing the future advanced manufacturing workforce with the skills needed by industry with a focus on advanced manufacturing and technologies including artificial intelligence. The National Center for Next Generation Manufacturing team will facilitate interactive opportunities for discussion, dissemination, and networking activities for attendees. Presenters will also review strategies for addressing challenges within the national advanced manufacturing technician education community that can be implemented at your institution.

WORKSHOP: Business and Industry Leadership Team (BILT) – a Proven Method for Strengthening Employer Engagement. Led by Ann Beheler, Director of Innovation, Pathways to Innovation, Center for Occupational Research & Development (CORD), TX; Hope Cotner, President and CEO, CORD, TX; and Maria Coons, Senior Consultant, CORD, TX. This workshop will cover the Business & Industry Leadership Team Model including its benefits, implementation requirements, and evidence of success. Activities will take participants through the entire model and will provide reusable worksheets as each element of the BILT is explained. In addition to successes, challenges and solutions will be addressed. Attendees should bring their own laptops.

Concurrent Sessions:

AI Upskilling Needs of Manufacturing Organizations and How Higher Ed Institutions Can Help Presented by Suj Chandrasekhar, President, Business and Industry Leadership Team (BILT) Chair, NCNGM, Strategic Insights Inc, Washington, D.C.; Ann Beheler, Industry Engagement Director, NCNGM; and Karen Wosczyna-Birch, Executive Director and Principal Investigator, National Center for Next Generation Manufacturing.

An Overnight Success Journey: Building a Manufacturing Workforce at a Distance With Mechatronics Daniel Davidchik, Associate Dean of Community and Workforce Education; Principal Investigator – Building Robust Mechatronics Pathways (Project BUMP), Central Community College, NE; Doug Laven, Mechatronics Faculty, NSF iMEC 3.0 Principal Investigator, Mentor-Connect Mentor, Expanding the Technician Workforce through Independent Mechatronics Education Curriculum (DUE 2400652), South Central College, MN; and Douglas Pauley, Workforce Consultant, NSF Project BUMP Co-PI, NSF Expanding Participation in Advanced Manufacturing Co-PI, Central Community College, NE. To address the growing need for automation technicians, educators from Central Community College (Nebraska) and South Central College (Minnesota) will share their experience developing and delivering a distance mechatronics course sequence that strengthens the workforce pipeline. This session introduces a distance-based model that builds partnerships with industry, high schools, and postsecondary institutions while expanding access to mechatronics, instrumentation, engineering, and other technical career paths. Attendees will learn best practices for offering hands-on technical courses remotely by engaging high school instructors and industry technicians as on-site facilitators. The session will also highlight strategies for scaling this model to additional colleges and outline opportunities to receive a free trainer and paid professional development in summer 2027.

Growing from ChatGPT to Autonomous Agents: Reimagining Teaching and Learning

Presented by John Jagtiani, Professor of Computer Science, CT State Community College, CT, in partnership with the National Center for Next Generation Manufacturing; Thomas Donofri, Student, CIS, CT State Community College, CT. Higher education is moving beyond tools like ChatGPT toward autonomous AI agents, multimodal systems, and adaptive learning platforms that may fundamentally reshape academic work. This session explores the shift from reactive text generation to proactive, task-executing AI capable of automating workflows, generating course assets, supporting research, and delivering real-time, personalized student feedback. We will examine multimodal AI, intelligent tutoring systems, AI teaching assistants, and emerging agentic platforms embedded within LMS environments. Strategic, pedagogical, and governance implications will be addressed, along with the competencies institutions must develop as AI becomes infrastructural rather than optional. The question is no longer whether AI belongs in higher education but how institutions will redesign themselves around it.

Developing and Updating Industry-Responsive AI Programs Using the BILT Model and New AI Tools Ann Beheler, Director of Innovation, Pathways to Innovation, Center for Occupational Research & Development (CORD), TX; Hope Cotner, President and CEO, Pathways to Innovation, CORD, TX. The Business and Industry Leadership Team Model (BILT) is widely used for promoting high employer engagement for existing and new technical programs. This session will focus on how to use new AI tools and other BILT-related tools to streamline creation of an up-to-date AI program and how to keep it current. Panelists that have used the BILT model to create AI programs will share their experiences and the new tools that help automate the development of emerging programs and keep them up to date.

AI and Industrial IoT’s Evolving Role in Industry 4.0Advanced Manufacturing and ESL: Analysis of Our Successes and Challenges During Rollout Gary Mullett, Professor and Department Chair, Advanced Engineering Technologies, Springfield Technical Community College, MA, in partnership with the National Center for Next Generation Manufacturing. This talk will address the role that AI and Industrial IoT (IIoT) are playing in the increasing implementation of Industry 4.0/Smart Manufacturing. We will examine the two-year college’s critical role in preparing the next-generation workforce in this area and the cross-disciplinary nature of that technical workforce. Industry 4.0 is no longer off in the future; it is happening now. Manufacturing is embracing the adoption and scaling of smart manufacturing with AI and digital transformation strategies enabled by IIoT technologies. Topics addressed will include: applications of AI and machine learning in the manufacturing environment, the maturing of various IIoT networking technologies and applications software, and the needed skills by workers entering this field as related to us by industry. Emphasis will be placed on how the two-year college can play a major role in the shaping of the needed technical workforce as manufacturing becomes increasingly data-driven and software-enabled. Invitation-Only: Mentor-Connect Summer Meeting. This event brings together a cohort of colleges that are preparing to submit ATE proposals in 2026. Mentor-Connect program empowers community and technical colleges to successfully pursue and manage funding through the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Program of the National Science Foundation (NSF). The 2026 Mentor Connect Cohort will have a chance to interact with Karen Wosczyna-Birch, Executive Director & PI of the National Center for Next Generation Manufacturing. along with other NSF ATE Center Directors and Principal Investigators.

Poster Session:

Mentor Up – A Longitudinal Study The Mentor Up Program (DUE#2032835), funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program, provides a mentoring program for community colleges teams submitting NSF ATE proposals. The project aligns with the NSF ATE program objective to provide leadership opportunities for faculty at two-year institutions and supports educating the skilled technical workforce for the industries that keep the United States globally competitive. The key outcome of Mentor Up is an increase in the number of competitive NSF ATE proposals submitted by community college faculty. This poster will demonstrate the results of a longitudinal study of Mentor Up outcomes.

Closing Panel Luncheon:

Changing Landscapes: ATE Center PIs on Navigating the Impacts of AI

Moderated by Mary Slowinski of Bellevue College, this timely discussion will feature insights from Jonathan Beck, National Center for Autonomous Technologies (NCAT); Andrew McMahan, Environmental and Natural Resources Technology Center (EARTh Center); Michele Robinson, National Cybersecurity Training and Education Center (NCyTE); and Karen Wosczyna-Birch, National Center for Next Generation Manufacturing (NCNGM). Leaders from ATE National Centers explore how educators can prepare the next generation of skilled workers for an AI-driven workforce. From cybersecurity and manufacturing to autonomous technologies and environmental science, this panel will explore how AI is transforming workforce pathways across sectors and what educators can do to stay ahead of the change.