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This project, supported by NSF ATE (award#2202107), aims to serve the national interest by addressing the shortage of technicians possessing the skills to maintain programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and robots in the service industries. Vaughn College program offers a PLC and Robotic Automation (PRA) Technician Certificate, consisting of 13 credits. It prepares technicians for roles in diverse service industries such as wholesale and retail, pharmaceuticals, food, and beverage, as well as airport baggage and cargo handling [1][2][3]. Additionally, all credits earned through the certificate program are transferable to the college's Mechatronic Engineering program. The college, designated as a Hispanic-Serving Institution, places a strong emphasis on recruiting students from low-income families and underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. The certificate program alleviates the financial burden and time commitment required for students to pursue education, providing them with the means to pursue advanced degrees or offer support to family members seeking greater opportunities. The project’s objective is to establish a one-year certificate program to provide PRA technicians with the essential skills for service industries. To ensure program graduates possess the desired qualifications, the project (a) collaborates with its Business and Industry Leadership Team (BILT) to identify industry needs and develop a curriculum to address them; (b) supports faculty in obtaining training and industry certifications; (c) recruits both high-school graduates, incumbent workers, and college students through newly developed informational materials. Additionally, to enhance diversity within the PRA Technician workforce, the program will collaborate with the college’s existing initiatives to attract more female and racial and ethnic minorities. Advancements in the comprehension of technical education for service industries are disseminated through the college website and presented at regional and national conferences [4]. 

Our modern age is being forged by industrialization and automation. Processes that once required tedious handwork can now be completed with higher efficiency and consistent quality by machines and facilities that perform their operations automatically. Examples of automation technology in our daily lives are found in households where washing machines are used, on the streets where traffic lights regulate traffic, or even in buildings that use air-conditioning units and automatic lighting systems. Open-loop control systems or closed-loop control systems are used in all these systems to determine a predefined sequence of processing steps. The Industrial Manufacturing System (IMS) developed at the college intends to address the need for education. This project introduces how the production assembly line develops. The system consists of Sorting, Assembly, Processing, Testing, Storage, and Buffering operations. The Siemens Simatic PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) S7-300 is used in the manufacturing system and TIA (Total Integrated Automation) Portal is used as the programming environment. This project focuses on the automation of an industrial manufacturing system through several tools such as PLC, TIA PORTAL (V16), and PROFIBUS. The control of the whole system is implemented by using Siemens Sematic PLC. The main objective of this project is to create a fully automated production line for college education. The system consists of Buffering, Sorting, Assembly, Processing, Testing, Handling, and Storage to minimize the risk to workers’ health [1] and the occurrence of accidents and increase production efficiency. 

Robotics has emerged as one of the most popular subjects in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education for students in elementary, middle, and high schools, providing them with an opportunity to gain knowledge of engineering and technology. In recent years, flying robots (or drones) have also gained popularity as teaching tool to impart the fundamentals of computer programming to high school students. However, despite completing the programming course, students may still lack an understanding of the working principle of drones. This paper proposes an approach to teach students the basic principles of drone aeronautics through laboratory programming. This course was designed by professors from Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology for high school students who work on after-school and weekend programs during the school year or summer. In early 2021, the college applied for and was approved to offer a certificate program in UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems) Designs, Applications, and Operations to college students by the Education Department of New York State. Later that year, the college also received a grant from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to provide tuition-free early higher education for high school students, allowing them to complete the majority of the credits in the UAS certificate program while still enrolled in high school. The program aims to equip students with the hands-on skills necessary for successful careers as versatile engineers and technicians. Most of the courses in the certificate program are introductory or application-oriented, such as Introduction to Drones, Drone Law, Part 107 License, or Fundamentals of Land Surveying and Photogrammetry. However, one of the courses, Introduction to Drone Aeronautics, is more focused on the theory of drone flight and control. Organizing the lectures and laboratory of the course for high school students who are interested in pursuing the certificate can be a challenge. To create the Introduction to Drone Aeronautics course, a variety of school courses and online resources were examined. After careful consideration, the Robolink Co-drone [1] was chosen as the experimental platform for students to study drone flight, and control and stabilize a drone. However, developing a set of comprehensible lectures proved to be a difficult task. Based on the requirements of the certificate program, the lectures were designed to cover the following topics: (a) an overview of fundamentals of drone flight principles, including the forces acting on a drone such as lift, weight, drag, and thrust, as well as the selection of on-board components and trade-offs for proper payload and force balance; (b) an introduction to the proportional-integral-directive (PID) controller and its role in stabilizing a drone and reducing steady-state errors; (c) an explanation of the forces acting on a drone in different coordinates, along with coordinate transformations; and (d) an opportunity for students to examine the dynamic model of a 3D quadcopter with control parameters, but do not require them to derive the 3D drone dynamic equations. In the future, the course can be improved to cater to the diverse learning needs of the students. More interactive and accessible tools can be developed to help different types of students understand drone aeronautics. For instance, some students may prefer to apply mathematical skills to derive results, while others may find it easier to comprehend the stable flight of a drone by visualizing the continuous changes in forces and balances resulting from the control of DC motor speeds. Despite the differences in students’ mathematical abilities, the course has helped high school students appreciate that mathematics is a powerful tool for solving complex problems in the real world, rather than just a subject of abstract numbers.