The University of Wisconsin-Stout is marking a major milestone in its commitment to preparing the next generation of automation leaders. As the manufacturing industry accelerates toward smarter, more connected systems, UW-Stout’s B.S. in Automation Leadership has emerged as a forward‑thinking pathway for working professionals who want to advance their careers without starting from scratch. The program is intentionally designed around minimizing the time to earn a degree, recognizing prior learning, honoring real‑world experience, and integrating industry‑recognized Smart Automation Certification Alliance (SACA) certifications to create a faster, more relevant route to a bachelor’s degree.
At the heart of the program is a simple but powerful idea: professionals shouldn’t have to relearn what they’ve already mastered. A total of 61 credit hours can be earned just through SACA credentials. This structure dramatically shortens time to completion while ensuring every credit reflects validated, employer‑trusted skills.
Just five semesters after being introduced, UW-Stout celebrated its first graduate of the Automation Leadership program.
Cody Erwin is the Industrial Technology Instructor and Technical Training Program Lead at Mid‑Del Technology Center in Oklahoma City. Mid‑Del is a dedicated SACA member institution and offers ten micro‑credential options in its Industrial Technology program, giving students a solid on‑ramp into modern manufacturing.
Erwin knows the value of those credentials firsthand. He came to education after working in industry, and he’s earned twelve SACA certifications himself. That experience shaped the way he now approaches training. As he puts it, he wanted to “build programs that were focused around automation and all the skills that we were needing in those types of roles that I had been in before.”
That industry experience is exactly what led Cody to the Automation Leadership program at UW-Stout. After years of seeing firsthand what today’s technicians and team leads are expected to know, he wanted a degree that aligned with the realities of modern manufacturing, not something disconnected from the work happening on the floor. Stout’s approach immediately stood out.
For Erwin, the way Stout structured the Automation Leadership program made all the difference. By transferring his twelve SACA certifications as university credits, he ended up saving around $20,000 on his degree. And because the coursework was fully online, he was able to complete the degree from Oklahoma and correlate his capstone to his work at Mid-Del.
When speaking about the program, Erwin says, “What stood out to me was how practical the course was. One, that it was offered online so I could take it while I was full-time teaching. And then two was my curiosity for the development between leadership and technical. I wanted to see how we could interplay those to promote more people to get into this trade.”
Being in education, Erwin wanted to focus his capstone project on the people in automation rather than a process itself. He designed a technical system that laid out proper standards, training, and the structure to sustain and grow into a larger scale.
Erwin graduated in December 2025 as the first person to earn a B.S. in Automation Leadership. Erwin is also a first-generation college graduate. “Becoming a college graduate, especially the first in my line of family, it was a goal that I set a long time ago and I slowly chipped away at it,” he commented. “So, to finally see the light at the end of the tunnel was amazing and I’m very thankful that I got to go through that process and grow.”
Looking to the future, Erwin will continue to focus on automation and workforce development. He also plans to keep utilizing SACA certifications with the students he teaches and for his own professional development.
Find more about the Automation Leadership degree here: https://www.uwstout.edu/programs/bs-automation-leadership
Find the latest SACA certifications here: https://www.saca.org/smart-automation-certifications/saca-micro-credential-descriptions/
Join us at the inaugural SACA National Conference: https://www.saca.org/sacacon/
