Submitted by The Southwest Center for Microsystems Education
The Southwest Center for Microsystems Education, a National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education Center, is working on a project to better understand the current state of the micro and nanotechnology based industry technician workforce. Through this project, we aim to enable our center to best support Community Colleges’ efforts to start micro and nano technology programs that use SCME developed curricula.
One goal of this project will be a map of the related, hi-tech industries relative to their local Community Colleges. We can then identify which regions our programs will make the greatest impact. This allows us to advocate and support the adoption of micro and nano education by Community Colleges on behalf of their regional micro and nano and related industries.
Click here to view the last revision of the map and hiring data through 2012.
Our second goal will be a trend analysis of several mapped industries. The SCME has divided the micro-nano related industries into several categories based on specialty and industry revenue. We aim to identify at least ten companies in each bracket and to determine their workforce needs so that we can target our educational impact efforts to yield the best results for both industry and education! These trends are presented to the Community Colleges near micro and nano tech related clusters, to provide a justification for incorporating microsystems based curricula into their programs. This enables the SCME to distribute scarce educational resources into the educational institutions where their impact will be the highest, resulting in a more informed and capable workforce.
This is where we need your help! As leaders in MEMS and related industries, please completing the survey found by clicking the following link:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RK6TG55
Aggregate findings will be shared with you as well as information pertaining to educational resources that will assist you as you build your technician workforce pipeline and enable you to be in a better position to plan workforce growth. Please consider collaborating with SCME to support our shared industrial workforce educational improvement goals!
Previous MIG Blog:
https://memsblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/survey-the-southwest-center-for-microsystems-education/
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