Project director named for Manchester CREATES workforce development initiative
Shannon McCracken-Barber has been named project director for Manchester CREATES, a workforce development initiative designed to dovetail with creation of a biofabrication hub in the city.
MANCHESTER, NH – Shannon McCracken-Barber has been named project director for Manchester CREATES, a workforce development initiative designed to dovetail with creation of a biofabrication hub in the city.
McCracken-Barber will provide overall direction and ongoing operational and administrative support for Manchester CREATES, according to a news release from University of New Hampshire Manchester. The initiative is an offshoot of NH CREATES, which is located on the UNH Durham campus. She will work with that leadership team, as well as with UNH Manchester faculty and staff, teachers and administrators in the Manchester school district and representatives from the state’s biotech industry, the release said.
Supported by money from the city’s $44 million Build Back Better Regional Challenge Grant, the initiative is focused on cultivating interest and expertise in biomedical science, research and technology among middle and high school students and teachers in the Manchester area.
The grant, awarded a year ago, by the U.S. Department of Commerce, aims to help build a biofabrication cluster in the Millyard, which U.S. Department of Commerce Deputy Secretary Don Graves said at the time will establish southern New Hampshire as a “global epicenter” for regenerative tissue and organs.
Projects funded by the grant are expanding the work started by Manchester’s Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute’s BioFab Foundries, founded by Dean Kamen, which develops cell and tissue cultures through biofabrication, automation, robotics, and analytical technologies.
The biofab cluster is expected to generate 7,000 direct and 40,000 indirect jobs. The program will seek to help fill those jobs through free educational programs that expose students and teachers to biofabrication and related industries, the release said.
Officials at a Manchester BioFab conference in June said expanding that type of education is a necessary element among many that will go into developing the industry in the state.
“It’s not about one company, or a couple of companies,” Kamen said at the event, but rather it’s about the entire community rallying behind the effort to make the city to bio fabrication and related industries what it once was to textile manufacturing.
McCracken-Barber, of Farmington, taught STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) in Farmington and Tilton. She attended the UNH Tech for Teachers Institute in 2020, and, since then, has taught in related NH CREATES summer programs in Durham.
