Ariz. Campus ‘Boot Camps’ Bow May 16 to Seed Future Chips Workforce

Three community colleges in Maricopa County, Arizona, are working with industry to soon launch a “quick start” program aimed at seeding “first-generation college-goers” for careers in semiconductor fabs, Leah Palmer, executive director of the Arizona Advanced Manufacturing Institute at Mesa Community College in Tempe, told a Semiconductor Industry Association webinar Thursday on the challenges and opportunities of attracting skilled talent to the U.S. semiconductor workforce. Intel, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and 15 other chipmakers and their suppliers are involved.

The program's “beta” phase launches May 16, and "we’ll have lots to share as we see this unfold,” said Palmer. Assessing the data gleaned from the program, and “refining our processes based on that data,” will be the next step, she said. Two-week “boot camps” will introduce entry-level students to a “curriculum” emphasizing the “competencies” that are of highest “priority” to the industry, she said.

An “acceleration” strategy will position the two-week boot camps as a “greater pathway” to broader college studies in engineering and other high-skilled fields to groom students for successful semiconductor careers, said Palmer. “We’re going to be sharing the data, and the matriculation, the benchmarking and the refinement of a student, all the way from attraction to enrollment to completion to hire.”

Intel announced in September it's spending $20 billion to build two new fabs on its Ocotillo campus, about 25 miles southeast of Phoenix, in addition to the $30 billion it already invested there (see 2109240043). Ocotillo will be the home of Intel Foundry Services to serve the wafer supply needs of downstream U.S. customers that currently are totally dependent on foreign supply sources. TSMC, the world's largest foundry, acquired 1,100 acres near Phoenix in late 2020, where it has said it will build a fab capable of producing 20,000 wafers a month starting in 2024 (see 2101140029).

More than 140 Intel engineers signed up to be the program’s “adjunct faculty, and we have now interviewed and cleared 49 of them to teach,” said Palmer. The program is engaged in “joint marketing” with Intel to attract student candidates and encourage their retention, she said. It’s deploying Oculus virtual-reality headsets to hone candidates’ interest, using content “that is specific to show the magic that’s happening in the fabs, which is very unfamiliar to a lot of people,” she said.

The program is seeking to boost the participation of "women technicians," and also is “highly targeting” veterans, said Palmer. “Our diversity and equity is of high value, keeping them in this accelerated model so we can get scale.” The program “is actually attracting those who have never been to college,” she said. “The beauty of this is not only do they leave with a portable industry certification, but a college transcript and the feeling at telling the people at their dinner table, ‘I have gone to college.’”

An advisory board of members from major chip companies helped build the program, said Palmer. “They all weighed in on the curriculum, the acceleration, the place in which their company needs these particular skills.” Chipmakers want to take “this baseline, entry-level semiconductor technician and grow them to become their next level” of talent, she said.

The program has a wait list numbering nearly 400 candidates, 372 of whom have passed a qualification “pretest,” said Palmer. “What we have realized in the Arizona partnerships that we have been developing directly with Intel is that we have to build this pipeline together. There is no way that you can come in with solutions that aren’t directly intertwined with industry.”

The program worked with industry to “define our mutual needs,” said Palmer. “The action plan that we were developing had to be integrated so that we had everyone at the table,” including school faculty, plus “the training arms and development arms at Intel,” she said. The strategy was to “reach populations that were traditionally not going to be reached or didn’t see themselves in this work,” she said.