2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The CC-PRIME project is a regional collaborative effort between Santa Barbara City College (SBCC) and the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) to provide educational pathways in the micro nano technology sector for community college students. This project is funded through the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program in the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) at the National Science Foundation (NSF). It includes several local industry partners, ranging from small to medium-sized companies, providing input through the project’s Industry Advisory Board into the local workforce needs in the field and associated training components. The project enables community college students to utilize advanced cleanroom facilities at UCSB with the goal to provide them training and experiences in semiconductor manufacturing. Additional project goals are to create a student educational pathway to acquire semiconductor manufacturing jobs in the region, and to build industry visibility in the community.
In the first two years of the project, existing training modules from the Support Center for Microsystems Education (SCME) have been adapted to meet local industry needs and develop an initial cleanroom training bootcamp. Project staff and faculty were initially trained on the SCME curriculum, which then was adapted and implemented on site at UCSB. Initial training included community college faculty and existing industry employees for upskilling purposes. Subsequent training bootcamps exposed community college students to work inside one of the cleanroom facilities at UCSB. With input from local industry partners and IAB members, additional training and modules are in development to further build-out corresponding educational opportunities for community college students and to broaden the initial cleanroom training.
This poster will summarize the project activities, results, challenges, and lessons learned from the first two years of the CC-PRIME project.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. 2100405. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.