The ARM Institute Champion program recognizes ARM Institute Members who have gone above and beyond the call of membership to strengthen US manufacturing through robotics, physical AI, and workforce development while advocating for the ARM Institute’s mission! ARM Champions are recognized annually at a celebratory dinner during our Annual Member Meeting, our premier members-only event that convenes representatives from across our member consortium for three days of networking, knowledge-sharing, and collaboration.
This year, we’re starting monthly highlights of our ARM Institute Champions to connect you better to their work, inspire you on how you might be able to take action on further collaboration with us, and help you meet your fellow Members.
This month’s Champion Spotlight features Terri Sandu, Director of Talent and Business Innovation for Lorain County Community College (LCCC). Meet Terri in the spotlight below!
To start, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Lorain County Community College?
I joined the college in January 2012 leading a team focused on supporting economic and workforce development, bringing many years’ experience leading workforce projects and organizations. My role has evolved. I now serve as the Director of Talent and Business Innovation, part of a suite of services designed to support business growth, and as Director of the Ohio Technical Skills Innovation Network, or Ohio TechNet, a consortium of community colleges, university centers and technical centers working together to accelerate innovations that meet manufacturing and tech workforce needs. Here’s more info from my bio:
Terri Sandu is Director of Talent and Business Innovation for Lorain County Community College (LCCC) where her work advances the College’s commitment to student success and business growth. Sandu also serves as Director of the Ohio Technical Skills Innovation Network, or Ohio TechNet (OTN), a statewide consortium of over 40 community colleges, universities and technical centers focused on accelerating innovation to meet manufacturing and tech workforce needs, facilitated by LCCC since 2014. A spirit of collaboration and innovation has led Ohio TechNet to successfully generate over $70M investment for its members and their industry partners in manufacturing and technology workforce development, impacting over 15,000 adults and youth at member schools, in partnership with over 1,200 companies. These include competitively won investments from the US Department of Labor, the National Defense Education Program, the Intel Semiconductor Education and Research Program, National Fund for Workforce Solutions and the U.S. Department of Energy.
Sandu serves on multiple leadership committees designed to meet industry talent needs including the Activation Team of the Ohio Manufacturing Workforce Blueprint, the Education and Workforce Committees for the ARM Institute and NextFlex, the Workforce Leadership Committee of the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association and the Steering Committee of the Ohio Semiconductor Collaboration Network. In 2025, Sandu was recognized as an ARM Institute Champion and in 2018, as a NextFlex Fellow. The Ohio Economic Development Association recognized her in 2011 with the Excellence in Workforce Development Innovation award. Her team contributed to the College’s designation in 2024 as the first Education and Workforce Development Innovation Center by NextFlex, America’s Flexible Hybrid Electronics Institute, and has facilitated the College’s active engagement with a number of Manufacturing USA Institutes.
How and why did you get involved with the ARM Institute?
To support innovations aligned to the College’s vision and strategic plan, our unit has assumed responsibility for managing the College’s engagement with Institutes within the Manufacturing USA network. My team manages the processes needed to maintain our membership via cost share documentation for ARM, America Makes and NextFlex. We or our partners have also leveraged tools and expertise from MxD and CESMII, and we are in discussion with Spark Photonics and have had Brad Conrad from NIST present recently on the work of Manufacturing USA on its advanced manufacturing competency model.
Our focus on the Institutes arises from Lorain County Community College’s role with America Makes – the first institute to be established. When I started at LCCC, the proposal that led to the establishment of America Makes in Youngstown was being developed, with leadership from LCCC part of that development team, and the College been a member from the start.
Early on, as a workforce professional, I realized that keeping up with the Institutes was going to be a challenge, so we have built in a strategy to pay close attention to the growing Manufacturing USA Network since the beginning of Ohio TechNet. It is difficult for community colleges and technical centers in particular to engage with the Institutes, so we focus on helping our workforce and education colleagues learn about, use and benefit from the workforce tools and resources coming out of Institutes where it makes sense.
Specific to the ARM Institute, it was a natural fit for LCCC to join given our existing automation pathways, and ARM has from the beginning had a strong approach to working with community colleges. Lorain County Community College has been a member from early on, and we leverage what we learn to share information and opportunity out through our OTN network. We are delighted to have LCCC President Dr. Ballinger now serving on the Board of ARM!
Our work with the ARM Institute deepened in 2018 when the ARM Institute had a workforce-focused project call. We responded with a proposal and won a $250k investment that benefitted not just LCCC but has had a major and lasting impact for Ohio. It helped us expand earn and learn, and partner with OMA which was asked by the Lt Governor at the time, Jon Husted now our US Senator, to facilitate engagement of industry to help the state prioritize investments in automation related credentials. The ARM investment covered costs for a consultant to facilitate a process hosted by OMA to engage industry leaders and they recommended just over 300 credentials. Their work also then directly informed the design and launch of a teacher education program that continues to run at LCCC, and has credentialed 41 educators to date throughout Ohio.
What advice do you have for newer ARM Members about how they can engage and get the most of their membership?
Come into the membership with a clear view of what your institutional goals are and who in your institution you want to keep engaged, and how you will do that. Membership engagement depends on institution type and goals – are you a company or researcher seeking to team on technology advancements and commercialization, do you have workforce needs or want to contribute insights to workforce strategies? Are you a workforce or education professional and if so, what does your institution or region need that ARM Institute resources can help you address? If capacity is an issue, see who you can team with in your institution or community to maximize the benefits of your institution’s membership. Try to find out who else in your region is engaged with the ARM Institute – this can be tricky for companies since sometimes locations are based on HQ and may miss that someone (a researcher or a tech lead) is involved who is based in your area. There may be opportunities to be a partner with companies / universities pursuing project funding for technology project calls however to be honest, we have tried and not been successful with that. It takes significant capacity that exceeds what many of us in the community college and technical center world have. An alternate approach is to stay in touch with the ARM Institute EWD team to share your goals and ask their help in making those connections.
Also be sure to involve the ARM Institute as partners if you are seeking competitive or other funding opportunities that tie to Automation and talk with them to get insights on National Defense Education Program, Manufacturing USA and other type investments so you have a longer lead time to understand what makes for a competitive proposal and put a team together – don’t wait for RFP/ FOAs.
Use the ARM Institute competency model to inform your work! Go to the membership meeting if you can – it’s great to meet people and network. Keep your faculty /educators / regional education and workforce partners informed of opportunities and resources from ARM as well that may be available to them even if they are not members. Keep track of everything you do that can help you document cost share.
What’s on the horizon for LCCC this year?
LCCC institutional goals: Our work at LCCC is guided and measured by an ambitious vision developed with community, staff, student and other stakeholder input.
Vision – THRIVE 2035 – Lorain County Community College
THRIVE: 35,000 by 2035 is Lorain County Community College’s bold new vision to deliver 35,000 more degrees and credentials of value by 2035 that will advance economic mobility for individuals and families and create a thriving economy and community.
- Transform Lives through Career-Connected Learning
- Harness Opportunity for Working Adults
- Raise Educational Attainment and Economic Mobility
- Ignite Economic Growth
- Value Community Partnerships
- Empower Future-Ready Learners
Specific to automation, staff and faculty are working with industry partners to continue to expand capacity, enrollments and completions in our automation and related pathways remains a priority. In Fall 2025, the College launched its multicraft technician program and that is seeing rapid success. We continue to grow enrollment in our Bachelor of Applied Science in Industrial Automation. A key need is to keep expanding opportunities for students who are not already employed to have opportunities for paid work-based learning – this is now a requirement for our automation pathways and multi-craft. This requires ongoing and intensive employer engagement.
The College in partnership with OTN team will continue to offer the I4.0 Teacher Education program and is exploring options for continued professional development for the 41 educators who have already completed it. This is a collaboration opportunity with ARM.
Industry 4.0 Teacher Training – Lorain County Community College
And, as shared above we are re-examining our vision for Campana to be a resource for small and medium sized manufacturers in particular to help accelerate adoption of automation and related technologies, including additive. We are exploring how we might find new ways to successfully execute on that vision. And of course, like everyone we are looking at how to fully leverage AI and to prioritize what we need to keep doing to keep pace with education and training for needed AI skills across occupations and pathways.
Ohio TechNet goals: We continue to leverage investment from the DoD STEM office (through August 2026) to expand automation programs in the state and offer the teacher education program. As shared above, we are exploring ongoing professional development opportunities for the 41 educators who have already completed it and are working on ways to track students and ensure they benefit from resources like roboticscareers.org. We have a primary goal to maintain them momentum of our OTN DIB STEM project, bring in new partners and pursue new revenue to keep further accelerate and expand the impact of this work. ARM will remain an important partner in this. We also want to maintain momentum on OTN’s work with its partners on Guided Youth Pathways, where over 11,000 middle and high school youth have had hands-on exposure to manufacturing since 2018 across 100+ sites in Ohio. With Ohio’s policy innovations that expand opportunities for technical education for high school students, we see substantial opportunity ahead! Activating Ohio’s Manufacturing Workforce Blueprint: Ohio TechNet serves in a leadership role to activate Ohio’s manufacturing workforce strategy, on behalf of Ohio TechNet. This work guides our priorities and ongoing collaboration with OMA, JobsOhio and others.
2026 will mark the 10th anniversary of the ARM Institute’s Annual Member Meeting. Can you tell us about the value you’ve found in participating in the Member Meeting?
The networking is really helpful to meet other innovative thinkers and do-ers and to get insights on national security needs, existing investments and collaboration opportunities to keep building on the momentum we have to meet national workforce and economic imperatives.
What is something that you’ve learned or accomplished by being an ARM Member that you otherwise may not have?
I appreciate the collaborative nature of the ARM Institute team and all their contributions to our shared work. We are following closely the work on AI that the ARM Institute is doing and trying to understand how it may inform priorities for actions needed to meet industry skill / workforce needs and support student success. We will keep using it in our work at LCCC and sharing it with our colleagues via OTN.
ABOUT THE ARM INSTITUTE
The ARM (Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing) Institute is a Manufacturing Innovation Institute (MII) funded by the Office of the Secretary of Defense under Agreement Number W911NF-17-3-0004 and is part of the Manufacturing USA® network. The ARM Institute leverages a unique and robust consortium of 470+ members and partners across industry, academia, and government to make robotics, autonomy, and artificial intelligence more accessible to U.S. manufacturers large and small, train and empower the manufacturing workforce, strengthen our economy and global competitiveness, and elevate national security and resilience. Based in Pittsburgh, PA since 2017, the ARM Institute is leading the way to a future where people & robots work together to respond to our nation’s greatest challenges and to produce the world’s most desired products. For more information, visit www.arminstitute.org and follow the ARM Institute on LinkedIn and X.