The 3M Manufacturing & Academic Partnerships (MAP) program launched at Anderson County Career & Technical Center in Clinton, Tennessee, giving students a pathway from the classroom into advanced manufacturing careers at 3M's Clinton facility.

The 3M MAP program is a national initiative connecting 3M facilities, technical colleges, and local high schools around a shared goal: expanding student access to advanced manufacturing careers. Since 2021, 3M has partnered with GPS Education Partners (GPS Ed) to build these coordinated ecosystems community by community — work that now spans 18 partner colleges, 40+ high school partners, and more than 5,000 students across 12 states and two countries.

Anderson County Career & Technical Center is where that work took root in Clinton. 3M recognized early on that a pathway like this needed three things to create lasting impact, not just short-term excitement: the established relationships that make a pathway real in a community, hands-on training on equipment that actually mirrors the job, and a credential that means something to employers. GPS Ed facilitates the design and manages outcomes and continuous improvement across the pathway, Festo puts real, industry-grade MecLab trainers in students' hands instead of a simulation of the work, and NC3 backs it with a credential that travels with the student wherever they go next. Together, they're what gets a student from middle school curiosity to a career in advanced manufacturing.

That approach reflects something GPS Ed has learned across decades of building work-based learning programs nationwide: the strongest student outcomes come from authentic, hands-on experiences that build real ability and a genuine sense of agency over where a student's path leads.

Manufacturing is short on skilled talent and short on time to build it, which makes every student who walks through Anderson County Career & Technical Center's doors part of closing that gap. That's the work GPS Ed shows up to do, one community at a time.

“I've had the chance to do this work with 3M in communities all across the country, and the same thing holds true everywhere: when a program launches with this kind of real partnership behind it, the relationships built along the way only get stronger. Anderson County Career & Technical Center is proof of that. Building those relationships, and watching them grow into more opportunities for students, is the part of this work I'm most passionate about, and it's exactly what makes partnering with 3M and communities like Clinton so rewarding.” – Tricia Muñoz-Ludwig