Two years since the CHIPS Act, pressure builds to train workers
A Purdue University program just finished its second year prepping undergrads for chipmaking jobs, part of a broader semiconductor workforce development push.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law on Aug. 9, 2022, authorizing nearly $53 billion to rebuild the nation’s semiconductor industry. With chip factories breaking ground from Syracuse, New York, to Phoenix in the two years since, the focus has grown on how to fill them with the next generation of workers — like Robert Zhang.
The rising sophomore at Purdue University participated in the school’s Summer Training on Awareness and Readiness for Semiconductors (STARS) program, an eight-week intensive program that wrapped up its second summer last month with 100 students, up from around 70 initially.
The initiative, which doesn’t directly receive CHIPS funding, aims to train dozens of undergraduates each summer for domestic semiconductor roles, paying a $10,000 stipend funded by industry sponsors including Intel, GlobalFoundries and Texas Instruments.
STARS will “definitely prepare me and give me the good experience for future opportunities,” Zhang said during his last week of the boot camp, where trainees learn to work in “clean rooms” and labs to either design, manufacture or package their own chips. Hands-on experiences like these are rare outside of graduate programs and paid job opportunities.
A Purdue University summer program gives undergrads hands-on experience in the chip-development process. Feichi Huang / Purdue UniversityThe Purdue program is one of just two monthslong semiconductor initiatives for undergraduates on U.S. college campuses, and the jobs it aims to fill represent just a sliver of the domestic industry’s projected needs.
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