Fueling Michigan’s Future with Industry-Ready Graduates
The value proposition of Kettering University in Flint is both simple and profound: Consider talent development like you would a supply chain strategy, and then partner with the institution that is 100% committed to building the workforce your industry needs.
In Michigan, that institution is Kettering University, a 106-year-old higher education leader that measures the success of its students not just in grade point averages and diplomas, but in patents earned, engineering breakthroughs achieved, and employer fortunes changed for the better.
Named after Charles Kettering, who believed in the concept of mastering a skill and learning through doing, Kettering University bases its entire approach to education on a foundation of theory and practice. Unlike a traditional university, Kettering’s curriculum alternates every 11 weeks, all 4.5 years between a classroom environment and professional employment experience. Students spend one term mastering theories and skills in classrooms and labs, and the next term applying them in a paid Co-op role, working on projects that add value to the bottom line.
President Dr. Robert K. McMahan said it best when he noted, “When students enter Kettering, they also enter a Co-op mentorship with a variety of industry partners who provide all the communication and management skills that you just can’t learn in a classroom. So, when they graduate, they are way ahead of their peers in terms of preparation. That’s one of the reasons that we’re always right at the top of the national lists — because our students graduate so well prepared.”
Photos courtesy of Kettering University
“Kettering has a whole Co-op and career design team that works very hard to ensure alignment between the students and the potential companies,” says McMahan. “We work with the employer partners to make sure that students are receiving experience, but also providing value to the company. It is truly a partnership between us and industry.”
Over 400 private employers partner with Kettering and its Co-op program. These partners range from Fortune 500 juggernauts like General Motors and Boeing to innovative upstarts like OPmobility and VEX Robotics. What they all have in common: a shared commitment to contributing as much value to Kettering’s educational process as the students deliver to the employers.
A Leader in Patented Innovation
The evidence of this partnership’s effectiveness can be seen in multiple data points. Kettering graduates earn the highest starting salaries of any school’s graduates in Michigan, according to a Smart Asset study in 2024. U.S. News and World Report named Kettering a Top 6 institution on its list of Most Innovative Regional Universities in the Midwest last year, and the 102 patent applications by students in the past 14 years rank Kettering among the highest-achieving institutions in the country.
Photos courtesy of Kettering University
This only happens when students receive hands-on training every single day on the job. As Enza Sleva, Chief Student Experience Officer at Kettering, says, “When our students graduate, it’s like they have two degrees: their academic degree, along with two and a half years of professional Co-op experience, and that is what stands out — not just in Michigan, but nationally. They’re gaining this unbelievable wealth of hands-on knowledge.”
Sleva says it’s this kind of cross-disciplinary learning that sets Kettering apart. “Before students even graduate, they might be leading a cross-functional team on a project,” she says. “They’re solving real-world problems: developing a new seat for car companies, working on actual medical devices, or working on robotics for a manufacturing facility.”
Case in point: Christian Lopez, 2025 graduate in industrial engineering. During his Co-op at BorgWarner and PHINIA, he designed the flow parts of an assembly line, rebuilt a warehouse for efficiency, and worked across multiple positions in Dearborn, Michigan, and Ithaca, New York. His work at PHINIA even sent him to Blois, France, where he was able to learn about global connections while traveling across Europe.
“Kettering is more than you think it is,” Lopez said after graduation. “You can’t really see that until you come here and make that jump.”
Fellow student Henry Grasman had a similar experience. A 2024 graduate in computer engineering, Grasman built a car powered by compressed air while he was still on campus. In another class, he invented internet-connected shoes that can tell what kind of music you’re dancing to. Grasman says he accomplished these things because Kettering gave him the freedom to experiment and test boundaries.
“The biggest success comes from Kettering because you have the opportunity to push yourself as hard as you want to,” he says.
Photos courtesy of Kettering University
In another recent success story, Michigan company OpenRoad partnered with a team of students at Kettering to design and build mobile chargers that extend the driving range of electric vehicles by 25 miles or more. The chargers are so light and small that they can fit within the size of a suitcase.
Grads Who Are Ready From Day One
Dr. Patrick Atkinson, professor of mechanical engineering and an alumnus of Kettering, says no other school in the country can compete with this model. “If you only go to class,” he says, “you’re only half an engineer. Kettering graduates leaders who are ready to hit the ground running.”
Over the past three months, student teams at Kettering developed AI-powered sun-blocking technology to improve school bus driving safety and won first place in the national Society of Automotive Engineering Clean Snowmobile Challenge by building and testing the lowest carbon-emission snowmobile among all entries.
Every day, Kettering students working at Co-ops are designing and building advances in autonomous driving, clean energy propulsion, AI-based applications for improving vehicle safety, robotics, and other forms of automation. Dale Pilger, Senior Director of Corporate Relations, says that “Kettering’s understanding of how industry works is unique to us. That’s one of the reasons we’ve done such extraordinary work with the Michigan Economic Development Corp. We have extraordinary industry relationships, and that shows in how we do our work. It’s part of what we do every day.”
That is why, when large corporate expansion projects land in Michigan, the MEDC is so well equipped to respond. They know that Kettering remains at the ready with a talent pipeline stocked with not just many of the brightest young minds in America, but with enterprising workers who have gained real-world experience at some of the country’s top employers.
From semiconductor technology and alternative energy to advanced mobility systems and biomechanical engineering, students who graduate from Kettering will push the boundaries of innovation and drive business success for decades to come. In short, they will shape the industries of tomorrow while being the best-equipped workforce you can possibly hire today.
This Investment Profile was prepared under the auspices of Kettering University. For more information, contact Rebecca Norris at Kettering University at communictions@kettering.edu or go to www.kettering.edu.
