Do you need some sort of clearance and NDA for your program?
To an extent, you have to be a US Citizen to get into any composites program, atleast that I'm aware of in my state you do. Depending on the emphasis track you choose to push your studies more towards, it veries on what kind of student you are, as well as the kind of career goals that you have in mind at a later time in your life. There is a lot of NDA in regards to specific quanities of materials, exact means of how they are laid out and put together, and so fourth. It's why if you didn't notice I talk about Boron Carbide with a broad brush, without getting into the specific variations of boron carbide, or specific forms of spinel ceramics.
I could choose to change gears in my studies and look towards vehicle armoring, or stealth armoring, or composites for use on commercial passenger aircraft, and so on. We all learn the core curriculum to manufacture, assemble, and produce composites of almost every nature except for those that require highly restricted materials such as uraniums (there are MANY types of Uranium despite public belief) and certain metals that would bore the crap out of you if you're not that fluent with metallurgy. (Metal and Ceramic materials make up the bulk of most composites next to different forms of resins and fiberglasses).
If you can suffer through the math and get through it, which is about 50% of the entire curriculum along with chemistry, so you know not to mix titanium without something like baking soda with certain types of reactive metals so you don't blow up your lab is one of those kind of reasons. The other 50% is dimensionally constructing your material on paper, then inputing information and data in several types of computer softwares, then if you get a go ahead we have specific materials requested for our projects issued to us. If it's a custom project (personal class project) than all material that is finished as the final product gets packaged, gets its tags, and sent off to the appropriate agency that has ownership of the materials. We then copy our data and paperwork, and send it separately to the same agency.
If it's commercial application like different materials for a fuel solage or materials to manufacture a stronger drill bit, and so on, those just get sent to specific points of contacts with the companies that donated the materials for our use. Red tape in composite programs only surface for material and data control, it's why you'll never see me post a photo of a ballistic plate I make, or sheet metals that survive dramatically massive temperatures.
Companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Motors, Colt, Sikorsky, BNSF, and other major companies donate a great deal of money to keep programs like the one I'm in running, and Air Washington also gives funding as well as the DoD and DHS, hense the types of products and projects that we get and can do. We are just glad to be able to learn what we can and do what we are able to do. When I'm done with my pre-bachelor studies I'll be looking at a full-ride through my Bachellors (Dual Major, Electronics Engineering and debating between Mathematics or Mechanical Engineering). Most of the guys in my classrooms already have transfer agreements pre-set, and jobs after their bachelor degrees pre establish as well. For the guys who are stopping at their Associates in Technical Arts, already have pre-contracted, entry employment into Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Another classmate has a direct employment contract with General Dynamics for R&D.
But to answer your question in just a sentence (also wanted to clear up some questions you may of had in addition to) the way our classes are monitored and controlled, as long as everyone is a US citizen and not disclose technical composition data of materials such as thicknesses, number of layers, what's mixed with what, how it's mixed and put together, or disclose "how to" manufacture or produce the things we make outside the classroom or specific labs or outside of employments, we are pretty good to go.
but that was very informative.
