Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology is partnering with local industry in developing a certificate program in Test and Product Engineering. Test and product engineers are needed in the semiconductor industry to ensure that small manufacturing defects do not impact the performance of integrated-circuit chips. Staggering improvements in the semiconductor industry have resulted in devices with incredible performance at the cost of increasing test difficulty. The learning curve for test and product engineers is long and slow, and few universities provide students with background in this area.
To address this industrial need, this project is developing two Test and Product Engineering courses with an intense hands-on laboratory component to support a certificate program in Test and Product Engineering. Strong industrial input is ensuring that the courses and laboratories are relevant to industry needs. Educational research expertise is ensuring that the courses and laboratories are improving students' higher-order thinking skills, creativity and problem-solving abilities. The project is applying a novel, industry-centered assessment strategy to determine whether the courses meet their goal of reducing the time it takes for students to be productive in the integrated-circuit industry. Materials are being developed to allow other universities to adopt these courses even if they do not have the expensive lab equipment necessary to perform the hands-on labs.
