In today’s rapidly evolving technical landscape, keeping an engineering workforce at the cutting edge requires continuous learning and customized skill development. Interdisciplinary Professional Programs (InterPro) offers over 200 public professional development courses each year across a range of technical disciplines. When a public course is too broad in content, InterPro can collaborate with a company to design a custom course that directly addresses their unique development needs.
Every custom course is targeted specifically to the customer’s workforce. “We identify our client’s skills and knowledge gaps in order to develop a customized curriculum to address those needs,” explains Erick Oberstar, InterPro Program Director – Electrification, Mechatronics, & AI/ML.
Custom courses offer the opportunity for a deep dive into a subject. For example, the field of electrification is broad and not all topics apply to all businesses. InterPro is collaborating with an international aerospace company to educate its engineers on particular power conversion topics. “We integrate the customer’s products, toolchains, and methods into course content to demonstrate where technologies apply to their individual applications,” says Oberstar. This ensures an efficient use of employee time and training budgets.
In another example, InterPro is bringing cutting-edge information to a high-end retailer through training sessions on emerging technologies. “We leverage the research of UW-Madison faculty to bring the latest technical information to our clients,” according to Susan Ottmann, InterPro Director of Professional Development. Recent topics include design of experiments, sensor selection, bias in design and Edge AI.
Successful technical upskilling involves more than course delivery (instruction); it requires ongoing integration of new skills into the workplace and a relationship with technical experts. “We partner with the client’s subject matter experts (SMEs) to help define needs and utilize them to provide context during the instruction,” explains Oberstar. During a class, SMEs can address questions about specific intellectual property issues and explain how techniques are utilized in the client’s own products and facilities. After the class, SMEs act as an on-site resource to answer questions and ensure that the new information is absorbed into the company’s best practices.
Custom courses bring targeted technical instruction to workforces. What are your custom technical upskilling needs? InterPro can meet them.
To create your team’s custom course, contact daryl.harrison@wisc.edu.