Concrete Industry Management National Steering Committee (NSC) members formally celebrated the CIM Program’s 25th anniversary late last month at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Murfreesboro, Tenn. The venue is near Middle Tennessee State University, which in 1996 launched the four-year CIM degree program, since expanded to California State University, Chico; New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark; Texas State University, San Marcos; and, South Dakota State University, Brookings (2022 academic year).
A first-of-its-kind college degree program for concrete production and construction in the United States, the CIM program has lived up NSC members’ expectations for the industry to have a continuous stream of professionals trained in concrete technology and management. To date, more than 1,500 students have graduated from CIM programs with the skill set necessary to meet the growing demands of the progressively changing concrete industry.
“For the last 25 years, CIM has remained strong throughout the many changes in the economic climate,” says NSC Executive Director Eugene Martineau (U.S. Concrete). “I attribute our success to two things—the dedication of the National Steering Committee and the local patron groups. The NSC exemplifies how firmly entrenched the concrete industry is in CIM.”
NSC directors represent ready mixed producers, admixture suppliers, concrete contractors, engineering firms, research organizations, and trade associations. Their mission is to develop, support, promote and sustain a network of higher learning educational institutions with programs that produce CIM graduates. Local patron groups are the backbone of the CIM program, providing guest lecturers, sponsoring field trips, hiring students and graduates, and ensuring financial support that matches or exceeds that of the NSC.
Seeing the need for concrete industry-specific executive education, the NSC launched an Executive MBA program in 2012, based at Middle Tennessee State. The program expands the industry/academic partnership by bringing CIM to the business world through an executive-type MBA and stands alone in its focused curriculum on concrete production and construction.