The TechEd Podcast

Updated: 23 Dec 2025 • 249 episodes
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Bridging the gap between technical education & the workforce 🎙 Hosted by Matt Kirchner, each episode features conversations with leaders who are shaping, innovating and disrupting the future of the skilled workforce and how we inspire and train individuals toward those jobs.  STEM, Career and Technical Education, and Engineering educators - this podcast is for you! Manufacturing and industrial employers - this podcast is for you, too!

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Watch the episode on Youtube: https://youtu.be/f5gWUVQI0jI Melissa Martin and Matt Kirchner are back to answer your questions, covering everything from university curriculum design, to AI in the classroom, to what employers actually expect when they invest in education. This one moves fast, but it’s focused: how do you

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The clearest way to understand Ronald Reagan’s leadership may not be from a podium, but from a saddle, a woodpile, and a quiet table where he worked through the ideas that shaped an era. In this on-location episode of The TechEd Podcast, host Matt Kirchner sits down with former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker inside th

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In this episode of The TechEd Podcast, host Matt Kirchner sits down with Irv Blumkin, Chairman of Nebraska Furniture Mart (NFM), and Ryan Blumkin, Executive Vice President, to unpack nearly 90 years of retail innovation, from Mrs. B’s pawn-shop beginnings to multi-acre campuses in Omaha, Kansas City, Dallas, and soon A

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What if you could get a behind the scenes look at China"s most innovative tech companies, factories and logistics hubs—seeing how they really run and asking the questions most Americans never get to ask? This week, you do. Matt Kirchner and Todd Wanek, CEO of Ashley Furniture, sit down to debrief the trip they took tog

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With artificial intelligence stepping off the laptop and out onto job sites, factory floors, and flight decks, are we preparing students for the AI that sees, senses, and acts in the real world, not just the kind that chats back? Matt Kirchner sits down with Lieutenant General Brian Cavanaugh, USMC (Ret.), CEO of Vigil

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How can CTE listen to regional economic and workforce needs and build a vision so big that others can"t help but support it? Watch this episode on YouTube  Matt Kirchner sits down with Adam Snoddy, Principal of the Butler Tech Aviation Center, to explore how one district used its regional economic identity to design a

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