Industrial Education Ch. 1: Introduction

I have been writing this blog on and off for almost 9 years now. From the beginning my intent has been to provide a free source of information to people interested in Industrial Automation; the field has been very rewarding for me and I hope to share my passion on the subject with other people from around the world.

When I started writing this in 2011 I posted almost daily, then weekly, then biweekly, then… well, I have let it slide quite a bit over the past couple of years. The fact is, its a bit lonely and not that rewarding to write a blog. You don’t get feedback every week and you run out of things to write about.

In 2011 I was still at Wright Industries, a large machine builder here in Nashville, Tennessee. People at work encouraged me and read my posts, and a year or two later I wrote a book containing some of the information I had posted here. I then moved into contracting for other machine builders and integrators, then into teaching PLC/HMI and SCADA, which I still do now. So industrial education has been a very important part of what I do for most of the lifetime of this blog.

This series of posts will discuss the current state of industrial education in the US and around the world. I hope to cover topics covering elementary through high school education (including the STEM programs), vocational/technical schools and colleges, independent for profit courses both online and in-person, and some of the resources that can be found on the internet.

I have already written a few posts on education and training, the first all the way back in February, 2011. As far as my background, I received my first technical education when I joined the US Air Force in 1981 after failing to graduate from High School. I was trained in electronics and became an electronics instructor in 1982. I went to a university as a 30 year old freshman and received my Electrical Engineering degree in 1993, and have been involved in industrial automation ever since, including a 10 year period of owning a custom controls integration and machine building company from 1996-2006. So I have a lot of background in the field and a lot to say on the subject of industrial and technical training and education. I hope you enjoy the next few posts!