Marly Earlywine is an assistant professor at Bluegrass Community and Technical College in the Advanced Manufacturing division. Her teaching focus is within the Bluegrass Chapter of the Kentucky Federation for Advance Manufacturing Education (KYFAME) AMT Program, and she serves as the AMT Program coordinator. Before pursuing a career in technical education, Marly worked at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky as a Skilled Maintenance Technician. She is a former student of the Bluegrass Community and Technical College AMT - KYFAME Program where she was sponsored by Toyota and graduated in 2016. Marly was named the Industrial Maintenance Technology Program Outstanding Graduate and also received the Parker-Carroll Distinguished AMT Student Award.
Registration is now open! Complete the form by clicking the link below.
For questions or more information, fill out the contact form below or contact Sara Palmer – sara.palmer@kctcs.edu or (859) 246-6717.
Thank you to everyone for your support.
The National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program has been funding innovation at two-year colleges for over twenty years. With a focus on the education of technicians for the high-technology fields that drive our nation's economy, and strong partnerships between academic institutions and industry, ATE promotes improvement in the education of science and engineering technicians at the undergraduate and secondary school levels.
To learn more about ATE, please visit the NSF ATE program home page.
Jeannetta Burbridge McNeill currently serves as Senior Supply Chain Project Manager with the Product Delivery Organization at Lexmark International. She accepted this position in October 2020. The role allows her to lead and influence projects that impact company cost savings, new product readiness and overall process and project management.
Since joining Lexmark in 1998, Jeannetta has held various senior management positions in supply chain planning including oversight of Lexmark Distribution Operations and Supply Chain Planning teams in Juarez, Mexico and Lexington, Ky. Her cross-functional management experience includes working with teams in China and in Cebu, Philippines.
She has also held positions at General Motors, working in the Delphi Division in Kokomo, Ind., before coming to Lexmark.
Jeannetta has been an enthusiastic leader/contributor/speaker in various local community youth and university student programs and is currently on the External Advisory Board for the UK/BCTC Department of Engineering Technology and serves as the Co-Chairman for the Girls Can Too Program.
Jeannetta holds a BS from Georgia Institute of Technology and an MBA from Indiana Wesleyan University.
Shawn Markham is a corporate fellow, one of the highest-ranking technical professionals at Corning Incorporated. She has been a leader in the company’s proprietary fusion process for over 30 years, innovating solutions to improve manufacturing for Corning® EAGLE XG® Glass, used in liquid crystal displays, and Corning® Gorilla® Glass, used on smartphones and other devices. In her role, she has traveled throughout Asia and lived in Kobe, Japan with her family for several years. Shawn holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Bluegrass Community and Technical College (BCTC) has seven campuses that are within a 30-minute drive of 95% of Central Kentuckians. The college enrolls over 14,000 students annually and provides training for business partners to more than 2,000 employees. BCTC is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges.
Learn more at bluegrass.edu.
The overall goal of the project is to recruit and retain more women in Industrial Maintenance Technology by increasing awareness and providing learning opportunities and mentoring beginning in middle school. Girls and young women will gain access to relevant dual credit courses in high school and have high levels of contact with faculty and industry professionals who are women.
Each year, project directors expect 80 students from middle and high schools to participate in program activities supported by two faculty who will lead the program of interventions and support that encompass Saturday engagements at the colleges Advanced Manufacturing campus in Georgetown Kentucky and summer learning experiences that engages them with hands-on activities related to industrial maintenance.
High school students who participate in the program will have the opportunity to take four technology-related dual credit courses to prepare for enrollment in the college's IMT program. IMT faculty will add to their pedagogical skills those strategies needed to engage a more diverse classroom by participating in BCTC's Cultural Competency course, a semester-long course developed and offered by the college to advance equity and diversity goals in teaching and learning. This cultural competency knowledge will be integrated into the IMT classroom to update the curriculum and better meet the needs of a more diverse student body.
Kentucky faces a skilled technical worker shortage that must be addressed if the state is to advance its manufacturing base. Analysis of graduation data in Advanced Manufacturing credentials by Bluegrass Community & Technical College (BCTC) faculty indicates few women graduate in these fields.
BCTC's three-year Girls Can Too Project will address this problem by educating, recruiting and mentoring 80 middle and high school girls into careers relating to Industrial Maintenance Technology (IMT), a key technical field that supplies highly skilled technicians who install, maintain and repair industrial systems equipment.
Project activities will develop awareness and learning activities coupled with mentoring interventions for these middle and high school girls and then recruit 10 to 12 high school girls to enroll in dual credit courses that will prepare them for transfer into the IMT program to earn certificates, diplomas or AAS degrees.
Mentoring and support by professional women employed in IMT will provide women enrolled in the IMT program with leadership opportunities as near-peer mentors for the middle and high school students participating in the Girls Can Too Project. The broader impacts of this project include support for girls engagement and transition into technical fields by strengthening and expanding high school dual credit programs to include IMT preparation courses.
The project also supports systemic change in the college's systems of support, mentoring, and industry connections through a female-led mentoring program and a Business and Industry Leadership Team (BILT). The intellectual merit of the project rest on its contribution to a growing field of study that assesses the value of mentoring and support interventions to address gender disparities in STEM fields. College administrators will review project successes and adapt or expand activities to grow enrollment in other technical programs with similar gender disparities so the college can build a diverse skilled technical workforce.
Industrial Maintenance Technology involves keeping industrial systems working.
In this program, you'll gain:
Technicians are the people who work with machines. They troubleshoot, calibrate, repair, re-program, and maintain them.
Graduates have held positions in factories, hospitals, hotels, and more. They need multi-skilled maintenance personnel like you!
ATE has a number of videos showcasing a number of women in Advanced Manufacturing fields. Below are some of our favorite stories.
To see more, please visit the You Belong: Women in Manufacturing playlist on YouTube.
