NFPA Member Companies Meet with Purdue University – Join the Next Conversation!

Byline: Kyla Olson, Workforce Program and Event Manager

Last month, NFPA hosted our most recent Indiana Workforce Engagement Group meeting alongside Purdue University. The virtual meeting was a success with eight NFPA member companies in attendance and two Purdue University Faculty members who teach fluid power courses. Our goal for the meeting was to get acquainted with the fluid power and engineering programs offered at Purdue University as well as to learn more about the workforce needs of NFPA member companies.

From this meeting, we began a larger discussion on the critical skills that students need in order to be fully prepared to begin their careers in the fluid power industry and what sort of projects could be implemented in their education to help in this regard. We also learned that Purdue University working on an NSF I-Corps project. As part of this project, they need to interview various market segments to understand better the trends and pain points in the heavy equipment industry. The interviews are virtual and take about. All information gathered during the discussions will be de-identified, and the results will be available to participants upon request. They have four weeks to conduct 70+ interviews, so NFPA members interested should contact Kyla Olson for more information. Following the Indiana Workforce Engagement Group meeting, we invited Purdue University engineering students to join the conversation and hosted a virtual career fair.

This event was part of a series of meetings with the Indiana Workforce Engagement Group and Purdue University. If you or your company and are looking to get more involved with Purdue University or the Indiana Workforce Engagement Group, please contact Kyla Olson at kolson@nfpa.com.