As the semiconductor manufacturing and wafer fabrication industries expand throughout the western US, the demand for highly-skilled technicians grows. This expansion creates the difficult challenge of upgrading course content and pedagogy, and providing adequate faculty development opportunities among community colleges, the primary workforce providers, and high school tech prep programs. The Albuquerque Technical Vocational Institute's (TVI) Project TIE, Training for Industry Education, will address this problem by holding twelve, five-day seminars in which up to 120 community college and high school faculty perform semiconductor manufacturing processes in a clean room environment. TVI's Regional Semiconductor Manufacturing Training Laboratory (RSMT Lab) is a cleanroom that has been built to meet industry demands for well-trained semiconductor manufacturing technicians. Seminars, planned by an administrative team of industry (Intel) and educational (TVI) representatives, will be designed to provide hands-on work in TVI's RMST Lab, dialogue about pedagogy, and discussions with semiconductor manufacturing engineers, scientists, and technicians. Participants will receive a resource packet containing a technical manual, bibliography, and information on developing SMT degree programs and laboratories. The target audience is community college and Tech Prep high school faculty. TVI's primary partner in this project is Intel Corporation, which has built Fab 11, its largest plant, in Albuquerque. Sandia National Laboratories is a secondary partner. Project TIE will provide faculty a rare opportunity to acquire hands-on experience in cleanroom environment. Improved and enhanced instruction and communication among community colleges throughout the US are anticiDated results as faculty take newly-acquired skills and resources to their schools.
