Funding

Our funding plan

The national attention on recognizing the need to reclaim technological leadership underscores the critical need for building a strong technical educational base. There is a strong effort to bring manufacturing back to the United States, and a major challenge is whether the US possesses sufficient talent to support these extensive efforts. It is a legitimate concern, and the BUILD program is designed to address this gap by providing the training and resources essential to build the workforce required to achieve these ambitions and rebuild our technical educational system from K-12 STEM through University engineering programs at the same time.

With the shift of responsibility to the states, education is becoming very important to local communities. With the loss of many federally funded programs, the states will need to find another solution. By focusing on the needs of their local communities, states will be able to focus their attention on educating for their specific community and industrial needs.

We want to create unprecedented technical leadership and an unsurpassed workforce. Given that neither tax dollars, universities, nor the students will be able to provide the significant resources necessary to sustain the program, we will seek to attract corporate sponsors. Such industry partners would provide mentorship training, human resources, and resources for the projects for all four courses. Sponsors would be incentivized by

• Access to top-tier talent for recruitment purposes

• Integration into their own co-op/internship programs

• Development of new, in-situ internship opportunities

• Access to top-tier teams for capstone projects

• Introducing students to trade tools they will later carry into their workplace

• Introducing students to components they will later carry into their workplace

• Introducing students to trade tools and components they will later carry into their workplace

• Top-notch mentor training

For the initial five-year development phase of the BUILD program, we plan to seek a combination of public funding and private sources to develop the curriculum and build the labs for a founding group of schools with students graduating at the end of year five. As the program progresses, industry partnerships will be incorporated to help to fund and support the program to ensure its sustainability. It is a designed to be an aggressive yet practical plan.