Pros
The researchers at CCAM are experts in their respective fields. CCAM’s physical location is nice. The surrounding areas provide staff and on site members with many housing varieties with low costs of living.
Cons
The technical leadership needs an overhaul. Member representatives and technical staff are often treated with condescension, disrespect, and dishonesty. The technical leadership blatantly disregards the wishes or suggestions of its partners and the opinions of the technical staff. There is next to no communication between the research managers and the research staff. As a result, projects suffer—deadlines are missed, budgets are overspent, and research staff members are overworked. Many times when a need is brought to the attention of the IT department, the individual with the need is deferred to a more favored time, lectured on the insufficient time that can be devoted to the need, and/or just disregarded. CCAM is not appropriately equipped to safely complete many research needs. Experiments often require fixtures and setups that could easily be fabricated in house if there were a few essential pieces of machinery, such as a mill, lathe, and decent vertical and horizontal band saws. In its current state, a task as simple as drilling a hole into a piece of thin plastic becomes difficult, time-consuming, and unsafe. There is no consequence for disregarding the safety policies set forth by upper management. The lack of respect for member companies and technical staff could make CCAM an undesirable entity with which to be involved. Three technical staff members have left within the past year. The claim that frequent staff rollover is the expectation is a means of shirking accountability for mistreating staff.