Published Thursday, April 11, 2024

by Paul Muschick

 

Today’s students are the future talent pool for semiconductor companies as the U.S. seeks to dramatically increase domestic production of chips. 

 

How to get students, and their parents and teachers, to consider semiconductors as a career was the topic of a recent article by Semiconductor Engineering that included insights from Karianne Gelinas, Vice President of Regional Partnerships & Talent Strategies at Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp. (LVEDC). 

The article, titled “Early STEM Education Key To Growing Future Chip Workforce,” said community outreach and partnerships are needed to drive interest in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects in students at a younger age. It offered examples of some of those efforts.

Developing talent for semiconductor manufacturers is an important concern for the Lehigh Valley, which is home to semiconductor technology firms including AAYUNA, Broadcom, Cisco, Coherent, Infinera, iDEAL Semiconductor, Intel®, and POET Technologies.

Several of those companies are looking to grow their Lehigh Valley operations. Coherent recently was awarded $15 million in funding from the federal CHIPS and Science Act.

To establish a local pipeline of talent, LVEDC has been helping to build relationships between the local companies and the region’s schools from K-12 through universities. It’s imperative that outreach is made to students before they reach college, Gelinas told Semiconductor Engineering.

“We have a branding issue when we’re talking about high tech with industrial and manufacturing jobs,” Gelinas said in the article. “Similarly with semiconductors, community members don’t know what building the hardware looks like. It hasn’t existed in the United States in large volumes for some time. So that muscle has atrophied, and we need to build awareness among parents — who are the main influencers on the students — as well as students and educators, so that they know what those jobs look like, here’s how you get those jobs, and why this is a great industry to be involved in. There are lots of reasons to talk about. There’s national security. They’re financially lucrative jobs. They are well trained.”

The article noted that LVEDC provides support to a new apprenticeship program in the Lehigh Valley designed to develop talent for advanced manufacturing, the Industrial Training and Education Consortium of the Lehigh Valley (iTEC).

iTEC is a partnership of industry, education, government, and community organizations. It is funded by a state grant and member companies. iTEC was featured in a previous article by Semiconductor Engineering in February.

The Lehigh Valley’s history of technological innovation began in 1951 with the first mass production of transistors, the forerunner to semiconductors, at Western Electric in Allentown.

Having such a large pool of talent centered in the region spurred other companies to locate here. Today, the Lehigh Valley’s technology industry features about 30 companies that collectively employ about 1,500 people and produce technology relied upon by brands such as Google, Microsoft, Meta, AWS, AT&T, Verizon, Netflix, and Nokia. 

Semiconductor Engineering has a monthly readership of more than 160,000. It was created by chip architects, engineers, journalists, end users, industry organizations, and standards bodies to provide insights into the designing, testing, verifying, integrating, and manufacturing of semiconductors.