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The month of October saw over 30 student tours in Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties, but many other events celebrating Manufacturing in Florida also took place.  Here are a few highlights! October 4- Upper Tampa Bay-Florida SunCoast Manufacturing Association (UTBMA) Sixth Annual Advanced Manufacturing Awards Ceremony at Nielsen Global Technology, Oldsmar. The UTBMA is dedicated to serving the unique business and networking needs of the approximately 400 manufacturers located in the region. The 2018 awards ceremony recognized regional manufacturers for their exemplary labor in manufacturing innovation and for the first time outstanding students and alumni were also recognized. During this event, FLATE’s dear friend Roy Sweatman from Southern Manufacturing Technologies received the distinguished 2018 Service Award. The 2018 Student Excellence award was presented to Michelle Puentes from Hillsborough Community College and Ryder Fizpatrick from St. Petersburg. Michelle and Ryder were

Last Thursday and Friday, representatives from 17 of the 28 Florida State and Community Colleges attended the Florida Forum on Engineering Technology .  Several colleges had multiple representatives and these college faculty and administrators were joined by several industry partners; regional workforce development professionals; technology vendors (who also provide food and beverages) and, for the first time, representatives from 2 Florida Technical Colleges (the public institutions that offer post-secondary training programs).     Thursday’s 63 attendees participated in the college roundtable updates; heard the latest results from the NSF ATE PathTech LIFE project which is working to define the characteristics of students enrolled in a variety of engineering technology programs across the nation and in Florida as a specific subset. The Fall 2019 ET Forum was the 41 st “ET Forum” held since its beginning in the late 1990’s that grew out of a need to respond to new state legislation r