In this research paper, we report our assessment of the congruence between two-year advanced manufacturing (AM) program syllabi to employer needs expressed in the Department of Labor's (DOL) AM Competency Model. The dynamic AM industry relies on two-year AM technician program graduates from state and community colleges. These program curricula are mandated to reflect state career and technology education (CTE) curriculum frameworks, but the frameworks are not designed to measure graduates' abilities to meet AM employers' current needs. Because this technology-reliant industry changes so quickly, faculty are challenged to source, develop, and implement responsive educational experiences. Through consultation with industry leaders, the Department of Labor (DOL) developed an AM competency model to illustrate and promote workers' necessary knowledge, skills, and dispositions. To determine whether the AM competency model can function as an exit assessment for AM program graduates, we compared AM program syllabi from five rural Northwest Florida state colleges to the DOL AM Competency Model. We text-mined competencies in both syllabi and the AM Competency Model and compared them to identify: 1) frequently addressed topics; 2) verbs guiding course learning outcomes versus the skill depth desired by employers; and 3) overall match between documents. Our findings indicate that despite being developed to reflect the same curriculum framework, the five AM programs' topical and complexity emphases varied widely. Overall, AM Competency Model content reflected higher levels of the Bloom's Revised Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, highlighting industry commitments to fostering analysis, evaluation, and creation. We conclude with implications for educational institutions, AM policymakers, and industry, outline the need for an AM Body of Knowledge, and propose an ongoing assessment model to improve the congruence between what employers want and what is taught in two-year AM degree programs.

In this research paper, we compare the alignment between advanced manufacturing (AM) competencies in Florida's Career and Technical Education (CTE) AM Curriculum Framework and the U.S. Department of Labor's Advanced Manufacturing Competency Model. AM educators are guided by state department of education documents that specify program content, while employers track the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that AM technicians require to successfully function in the workplace. The Curriculum Framework, created with input from educators and industry, shape AM curricula and course syllabi because they specify the learning outcomes that AM graduates upon completion of two-year AM degree programs. The Department of Labor's Advanced Manufacturing Competency Model, crafted by federal policymakers and industry representatives, includes personal, academic, industry-specific, and managerial competencies needed by successful AM technicians; the Model is intended to influence technicians' hiring, training, and evaluation. Although these documents were created by different sets of stakeholders, they "bookend" AM technicians' school-to-career pathways. To determine the extent to which the 2019-2020 Florida AM Curriculum Framework aligns to the Department of Labor's Advanced Manufacturing Competency Model, we used text mining to extract and compare the key competencies found in both documents. Through this approach, we compared these documents and identified: 1) frequently addressed topics; 2) verbs that guided the complexity (i.e., Bloom's Revised Taxonomy of Learning Objectives cognitive level) of the course learning task versus workplace competency; and 3) overall match between the documents. Our results suggest that the documents overlap very little, with significant misalignments in higher-level Bloom's verbs. We present implications for educational institutions, AM policy makers, and industry; suggest a revision cycle and process; and propose an ongoing assessment model to improve the congruence between what employers want and what is taught in two-year AM degree programs.