Semiconductor, Advanced Manufacturing, and Electronics Technology
The Maricopa Advanced Technology Education Center National Resource Center (MATEC-NRC) provides resources and services that are directed at enhancing the technician workforce and its diversity and strengthening community college semiconductor, automated manufacturing, and electronics programs. The project links a comprehensive array of programs and services developed by MATEC, its partners and collaborating ATE Centers and projects. It creates unique programs that incorporate lessons learned into its juried clearinghouse. The center has an extensive dissemination and outreach effort, which is designed to insure the resources, are utilized to affect maximum student impact.
The NRC creates a network of industry and educators to exchange knowledge, needs and trends. The resource center also develops a set of best-known tools and resources for program development. With key strategic linkages to other ATE projects and centers such as the National Center for Manufacturing Education and the National Engineering Technology Education Clearinghouse, the NRC is developing a comprehensive resource to support technician education across disciplinary fields. The MATEC-NRC focuses on the following goals: Goal 1: Expand involvement of the education community in contributing to national knowledge about technician preparation. Goal 2: Establish a unique model program for creating and broadly disseminating, reusable learning material for technician preparation. Goal 3: Equip schools and communities with the ability to create an awareness of career and education opportunities and learners with the ability make decisions about career and education options. Goal 4: Accelerate the ability of the national technician education community to adapt as technologies and learner needs change.
Intellectual merit: The primary focus of this project is in the areas of semiconductor, automated manufacturing, and electronics with key linkages to manufacturing, MEMS and nanotechnology and engineering technologies. The resources offered ensure that current science, math, and technology are learned in the relative context of these disciplines.
Broader Impact: This project involves collaboration between industry and education to leverage the impact of MATEC, its partners and collaborators. Together they focus on unifying efforts in program support and assembly of exemplary material and practices in the area. To ensure student impact the NRC provides not only material resources, but also guides to resource implementation for maximum student impact. Through strategic linkages with ATE projects and centers, the impact is being extended to new constituencies and ultimately results in learners with a broad skill set that promotes their skills and abilities in diverse industry sectors.
Students who are enrolled at Community Colleges who are preparing to work in technical fields need to have the knowledge, skills, and abilities desired by their employers. In turn, faculty at Community Colleges need to have industry relevant material and knowledge to construct the learning opportunities for their students. How do faculty best prepare their students for the world of work and further education? The MATEC NetWorks National Resource Center has created answers for this question. The Center created a customized digital library, www.matecnetworks.org, where faulty can find classroom-ready and pedagogy resources. These materials were collected from education and industry sources and organized to make it easy for faculty to find and use these resources. Today the digital library contains over 1,600 items in fields such as semiconductor manufacturing, electronics, automation, and nanotechnology. These resources are presentations, research reports, best models for teaching, animations, simulations, lab and learning activities, and links to video clips –all the things needed to help faculty use the latest technologies from industry and the most effective learning methods to prepare their students. Knowledgeable faculty are the other key component of what is needed to help students succeed. The center created a major series of seminars delivered in an all web format for faculty to keep up-to-date at any time in any place. These web seminars or "webinars" had over 9,000 registrants since they first began in 2007. This includes the events the center produced and co-produced with other projects. Faculty can attend at the time of the live webinar or view the recording and handouts at a later time as fits their schedule. These webinars broadly distribute the center’s resources throughout the nation. In just 90 minutes a faculty member can log-on to see the latest from industry on nanoimprinting or view the best approaches to creating new industry relevant credentials for their students. Here is what faulty have to say: "Being able to see and compare what I am doing with the rest of the participating faculty on NetWorks helps me get my students ready to compete with the rest of the country."—Smokey Trujillo, Santa Fe Indian School, NM, and "The 'classroom-ready' tutorials from NetWorks have assisted in my efforts to bridge gaps in student knowledge of applied math and physics. The ability to pick and choose from numerous resources is invaluable."—Helen LaLone, Springfield Technical Community College, MA The center also had the opportunity under supplemental funding to produce an informative brochure and website in an effort to broadly disseminate the work of the Advanced Technological Education Program at the National Science Foundation, www.atecenters.org The MATEC NetWorks National Resource Center is hosted by the Maricopa Community Colleges and they will help sustain these activities after the official funding from the NSF has ended.
