Keith Belton to attend Washington, D.C., event on workforce development in the manufacturing sector

Indiana University continues to extend its commitment to workplace and economic development across industrial sectors.

Keith Belton, director of the Manufacturing Policy Initiative at the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs, will attend an event titled “Securing the Future of American Engineering & Manufacturing: A Workshop on the New, Re-Imagined World of Universities and ‘Work-and-Learn’ Workforce Development Strategies” June 4 in Washington, D.C.

“The sponsors are interested in bridging the skills gap in the U.S. manufacturing sector,” Belton said. “I’m conducting research on how well apprenticeship programs in the state address the skills gap, which is the difference between the number of manufacturing jobs available and the number of skilled workers needed to fill them.”

The Manufacturing Policy Institute serves as a source of objective, state-of-the-art information; offers analysis and recommendations on public policy issues affecting U.S. manufacturing; and is a resource for policymakers, manufacturers, the workforce and academia.

“We study how public policy affects the competitiveness of domestic manufacturing,” Belton said. “This issue is at the forefront of policy debates at the federal level.”

Ali Razban, clinical associate professor of mechanical engineering at IUPUI, and Robert Weissbach, chair of the department of engineering technology at IUPUI, also will attend the workshop.

Sponsors of the Washington, D.C., workshop include the Association of Public Land-Grant Universities, LIFT and the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences.