Center N.M. College Offers Microelectronics Degree
Published Mar 27, 2008
Central New Mexico Community College offers students hands-on experience with seminconductor manufacturing.
Central New Mexico Community College’s manufacturing technology program is relatively small, both in its number of students and its subject focus.
But the concentration has had a large impact on its students as well as the area’s technology firms.
“The six or so students I graduate every year all get jobs,” says Matthias Pleil, a professor at CNM’s School of Applied Technologies.
“We’re trying to provide a base for the workforce, that’s the key thing.”
He says that anywhere between 40 and 60 students are at some stage of earning their associate of applied science degree in manufacturing technology.
Intended to be a two-year program, the degree includes about 70 hours of instruction and allows students to concentrate in semiconductor manufacturing, advanced manufacturing, or Micro-Electro Mechanical Systems, or MEMS.
The MEMS field, which deals with work on the extremely small scale, provides technology for companies ranging from biomedical products to electronics that people use in their everyday lives.
“I focus on the microsystems because that’s what’s being done now,” says Pleil, who also serves as principal investigator of the Southwest Center for Microsystems Education. “It encompasses computer chip fabrication as well as the sensors used in (vehicle) crash bag systems.”
The center is now housed at CNM but will be moving to nearby University of New Mexico, he says. A National Science Foundation-funded project, the center focuses on developing workforce training materials in the field as well as reaching out to high school students to explain about microsystems and the future job market.
At CNM, students learn electronics and mechanical components concepts. They absorb how circuits are used in the micro-machines and semiconductors.
And they work in so-called “clean rooms” where they get hands-on experience in areas like processing silicon wafers.
“They finally start to understand how their iPods work, how their game controller works, how their car navigation system works,” Pleil says. “It’s not just magic anymore. They finally get a feel for that, and that excites them to go after a career in this.”
Story by Victoria Eckenrode
Photo by Ian Curcio
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