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BOARD # 325: ATE: Regional Industry-Focused Micro/Nanotechnology Education Partnership

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Conference

2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Publication Date

June 22, 2025

Start Date

June 22, 2025

End Date

August 15, 2025

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session II

Tagged Topics

Diversity and NSF Grantees Poster Session

Page Count

5

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/55692

Paper Authors

biography

Jens-Uwe Kuhn Santa Barbara City College

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Dr. Jens-Uwe Kuhn serves as PI for this NSF ATE funded project at Santa Barbara City College. He has extensive experience in collaborating with the Center for Science and Engineering Partnerships and the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California Santa Barbara, which provides the cleanroom facility for this project. He works directly with many local industry partners and regional stakeholders on this project, including on efforts around its sustainability.

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Abstract

The CC-PRIME project is a regional collaborative effort between Santa Barbara City College (SBCC) and the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) to provide educational pathways in the micro nano technology sector for community college students. This project is funded through the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program in the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) at the National Science Foundation (NSF). It includes several local industry partners, ranging from small to medium-sized companies, providing input through the project’s Industry Advisory Board into the local workforce needs in the field and associated training components. The project enables community college students to utilize advanced cleanroom facilities at UCSB with the goal to provide them training and experiences in semiconductor manufacturing. Additional project goals are to create a student educational pathway to acquire semiconductor manufacturing jobs in the region, and to build industry visibility in the community. In the first two years of the project, existing training modules from the Support Center for Microsystems Education (SCME) have been adapted to meet local industry needs and develop an initial cleanroom training bootcamp. Project staff and faculty were initially trained on the SCME curriculum, which then was adapted and implemented on site at UCSB. Initial training included community college faculty and existing industry employees for upskilling purposes. Subsequent training bootcamps exposed community college students to work inside one of the cleanroom facilities at UCSB. With input from local industry partners and IAB members, additional training and modules are in development to further build-out corresponding educational opportunities for community college students and to broaden the initial cleanroom training. This poster will summarize the project activities, results, challenges, and lessons learned from the first two years of the CC-PRIME project. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. 2100405. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Kuhn, J. (2025, June), BOARD # 325: ATE: Regional Industry-Focused Micro/Nanotechnology Education Partnership Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada . https://peer.asee.org/55692

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