An Advanced Inertial Reference Sphere with Floated Inertial Measurement Ball navigation system is on display at Draper, a major engineering firm from Cambridge, Mass., opening a campus in Clearfield, on Tuesday, April 23, 2024. The company has a decades-long partnership with the U.S Air Force at Hill Air Force Base, and has plans for Utah in sectors including biotechnology, electronic systems, space systems and national security.
Draper is a nonprofit 5013; one of its missions, Quant said, is to “expand the STEM technical workforce.” It does that through itsStudents get tuition coverage and a stipend for their time; in exchange, they dedicate their studies to a Draper project. This year’s cohort included 90 master’s and Ph.D. students from roughly a dozen universities, including MIT, University of Colorado Boulder and Brown University.
The University of Utah — the state’s flagship institution — is one of the schools that met with the company’s representatives, confirmed U. spokesperson Rebecca Walsh.The U. has made a point of partnering with industry leaders in recent years, with the aim of landing students jobs upon graduation — particularly jobs that contribute to the state’s $21 billion annual GDP around life sciences, Walsh said, pointing to numbers from a 2023 Gardner Policy Institute report.
Another potential partner for Draper could be Utah’s growing technical colleges — where more students in the state are going to gain hands-on workforce training in a shorter amount of time than a four-year degree. Bush said the technical college is interested in exploring internships and scholarships for students with Draper, as well as securing future jobs with the company or the Air Force that the company serves., part of a Department of Defense program that connects active-duty members to career training and work opportunities, giving them a “soft landing” as they transition out of active service, Quant said.