The Manufacturing Engineering Education Partnership or MEEP (UPR-Mayagüez, Penn State University and the University of Washington, in collaboration with Sandia National Laboratories and industry) has developed an undergraduate product realization/manufacturing engineering option which addresses various issues of the new ABET 2000 criteria, specifically criteria 2 and 3. The result of this program is the Learning Factory, an outcomes-based undergraduate curriculum integrated to laboratory facilities and industry collaboration. This workshop will go through the steps that helped the partnership develop this program. From the establishment of educational objectives to planning (resources, timetable, responsibilities) to curriculum development (courses, integrated laboratory facilities, industry collaboration), and finally to outcomes assessment (designing the assessment strategy, conducting assessment, design of tools, reporting and feedback). Workshop attendees will have an opportunity to work on developing an engineering student profile and planning for adopting/adapting the Learning Factory Program at their institutions.

The University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez received an award from NSF's Engineering Education Action Agenda to offer four (4) workshops at major engineering education conferences. The NSF award was complemented by a grant from Raytheon Company to sponsor additional workshops at ten (10) minority serving institutions.

Microsoft Research recently awarded the Learning Factory Team a grant to offer eight (8) workshops in Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico.