Chandler , Ariz. -

It’s a typical balmy fall afternoon here, as about 15 high school students file into class. Most wear the de-facto teen uniform of sweatshirts, comfortable pants, and sneakers and, in elevated voices, they joke among themselves as they make their way to their seats at group tables.

The periphery of the otherwise typical-looking classroom contains electrical devices and thin, unassuming wafer-like objects that can form the building blocks of semiconductors, which power just about all our modern-day electronic devices—from smartphones to satellites.

While these high schoolers may act and look like typical teens, what they’re learning is not typically found in the traditional high school curriculum. Studying the inner-workings of semiconductors is generally reserved for college students studying STEM-related disciplines or employees in the industry receiving hands-on training.

Yet when Hamilton High School began offering a cutting-edge career and technical education (CTE) semiconductor program this school year, students like senior Alina Kiselev wanted in on it. She doesn’t have enough time to complete the two-year, 18-credit program. But she enrolled in the introductory course anyway, “just for fun.”

A self-described lover of all things physics and electronics, Alina’s natural curiosity piqued her interest in learning about semiconductors. She also admits to wanting to know more about the conversations she’s been overhearing from the back seat of the family car all these years when her parents, both technicians at Intel, drove her to school on their way to work.

“I used to think [the semiconductor industry] was all about the people in the bunny suits working with the wafers, but it’s so much more than that,” Alina said

Bunny suits? Wafers? Just months into the course, Alina and her classmates toss around these and other industry-associated terms as though they’re typical of teen vernacular. (Bunny suits refer to protective garments worn by workers in semiconductor hubs. Wafers are disc-like silicon substances that make up the building blocks that eventually power electronics.)

That’s intentional, as building industry vocabulary is an essential piece to the CTE program’s overarching goal of exposing students to the booming semiconductor industry’s manufacturing process, from the principles to the processes and the tools that underpin it.

This exposure can’t come soon enough for students in a state that has emerged as a leader in the semiconductor industry. In the last five years, Arizona has secured more than $210 billion in semiconductor-related investments, some of it tied to the CHIPS Act of 2022.

That federal law allocated approximately $50 billion over five years to drive the United States’ semiconductor manufacturing industry and reverse a decades-long decline in the nation’s global presence in the sector. In 1990, 37% of all semiconductor manufacturing occurred in the U.S.; today, it’s closer to 12%.

The Chandler Unified school system’s creation of the program is “absolutely appropriate now, given the scale of investment and anticipated workforce needs,” said Steven Zylstra, CEO and president of the Arizona Technical Council, a trade association for the state’s science and technology companies. “The semiconductor industry has matured to the point that workforce shortages are becoming a bottleneck.”

But the program—funded through state and federal grants—required a lot of groundwork from the Chandler Unified school district. From tapping local higher education experts to drumming up support from local and global companies to raising awareness and interest among staff, students, and parents, each step in the process started with efforts initiated from inside the district.

How Chandler went from a sleepy agrarian town to the ‘Silicon Desert’

A confluence of factors aligned to transform Chandler from a sleepy agrarian outpost of Phoenix to what some have nicknamed “Silicon Desert.” Business experts point to the suburb’s vast amount of land, close access to an international airport, a business-friendly environment (based on its tax structure), and higher education institutions like University of Arizona and Arizona State University dedicated to innovative research in tech-heavy industries.

In 1980, Intel opened its first manufacturing plant in Chandler. Fast forward to 2022, when the CHIPS Act led to a $7.9 billion investment for the growth of the company’s U.S.-based semiconductor manufacturing facilities, including one in Chandler. The forthcoming semiconductor projects at four U.S. facilities are part of Intel’s plan to invest more than $100 billion to expand chip production capacity and capabilities in the country, according to a company spokesperson.

TSMC Arizona, another key player in the industry, has made a $65 billion investment to fund three semiconductor fabrication plants in its nearby Phoenix location following the passage of the CHIPS Act. Overall, the state’s investment in semiconductor expansions related to the federal law represents 13,000 potential jobs, according to the Arizona Commerce Authority.

Hamilton High’s new program—which adds to the district’s cadre of 20 other CTE programs—is the district’s attempt to respond to the growing semiconductor workforce demands in its own backyard. Its goal is for the program to be relevant, universal, and flexible.

Hamilton High School, in the heart of the affluent and sprawling suburb of Chandler, serves about 3,300 students from diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds: 37% of its student body is white, 25% is Hispanic, 18% is Asian, and 9% is African American. While 39% of public school students across Arizona are eligible to receive free lunch, just 14% of students at Hamilton High are.

The school’s students are also well-positioned to continue their education after high school graduation: 83% of its graduates attend a two- or four-year college, compared to a national rate of approximately 62%, and students score higher in both the math and the evidence-based reading and writing portions of the SAT than students nationally, averaging 669 versus 508 (math); and 651 versus 520 (reading and writing), respectively.

“Some of the kids [in my class] are very academic; they probably have a direct path to college,” said the semiconductor instructor, Omar Muñoz, whose engineering degree preceded his nearly 30-year career in the semiconductor industry, most recently at Intel in Phoenix. The 53-year-old last year took an early retirement and pivoted to teaching; the timing worked well for him and Hamilton High.

As for Muñoz’s students, he says even those who choose not to go to college but who complete the two-year semiconductor CTE program could possibly be hired immediately at a company in an entry-level manufacturing position. Plus, a partnership with Rio Salado College, a community college in neighboring city Tempe, allows Hamilton students the option to earn college credits for the coursework associated with the program.

A search for industry and academic partners reaps results

When Chandler Unified’s administration in 2023 approached Janet Hartkopf, the school’s emerging technology coordinator and a former cybersecurity instructor, about spearheading a new CTE program focusing on the semiconductor industry, she knew she’d be starting from scratch.

“There is nothing out there. There’s no high school curriculum. The best we have right now is advanced manufacturing, and that is different,” Hartkopf recalls thinking, as planning for the program was just getting started. “We wanted to be very intentional in its design. … We wanted to make it modular, flexible, so that any district can scaffold it to what they need.”

But first, she’d need to find the right experts to guide the program’s development.

Hartkopf found a strong partner in the University of Arizona, where she welcomed the expertise of staff led by Liesl Folks, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and the founding director of the university’s Center for Semiconductor Manufacturing.

The university was in the process of ramping up its efforts to support the semiconductor industry by establishing and strengthening industry and academic partnerships. As part of that effort, the university entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Chandler Unified school district’s governing board to establish Hamilton High’s program in semiconductor manufacturing.

With the University of Arizona providing research expertise and the training know-how, Hartkopf began seeking industry support for the program. “I visited over 50 companies, just in Chandler alone,” Hartkopf said.

In response, she received support from 25 companies, both local and global. Arm, the largest semiconductor company in the United Kingdom, agreed to sponsor a semiconductor summer camp run jointly by University of Arizona and Chandler Unified. A U.S.-based Samsung employee shared a draft of the school’s curriculum with colleagues at the company’s corporate headquarters in South Korea for review.

Representatives of locally-based semiconductor companies have made classroom visits to explain what their organizations do, and the roles their employees play. Alina and her classmates have gotten to interview them about their jobs, learning about what it’s like to be an engineer, a mechanic, a production associate, and a member of a manufacturer’s emergency response team.

Additionally, company representatives have made guest appearances at professional development sessions to help district staff increase their knowledge of the semiconductor industry. Other companies have contributed classroom equipment such as small electronics and sanitized data samples for use during in-class projects.

Earlier in the fall, the students got a free pass to skip class and attend SEMICON West, a premier microelectronics exhibition. Normally held in technology hub San Francisco, this year it was in Phoenix. There, Alina said she met people who design and sell critical components of semiconductors to major companies like TSMC and Intel.

The industry’s role is also evident in the school curriculum, which was shaped in large part by University of Arizona instructional designers.

“I am 100% confident of what we built, because we built it with industry, for industry, from the start,” Hartkopf said. She added that the entire two-year curriculum, slated for completion in the spring of 2027, will evolve as the industry does.

“Technology changes so much,” she said. “You cannot afford to say ‘we’re done.’”

Getting the word out to students and staff

As the school’s curriculum started to come together, the district turned its attention to marketing the program. In partnership with the University of Arizona’s Center for Semiconductor Manufacturing, it decided to launch an annual weeklong semiconductor summer camp, starting in the summer of 2024, to gauge, and hopefully pique, student interest in the subject.

The “chips and wafers” camp, for rising 9th and 10th graders, promised participants the opportunity to meet with University of Arizona semiconductor experts, tour Chandler-based semiconductor companies, and participate in hands-on activities.

It proved popular. In the camp’s first year, within 36 hours of opening registration, 96 students attempted to register for 40 slots, Faulks said. Thirty-three percent of campers later enrolled in Hamilton High’s semiconductor program.

Hartkopf continually works at finding ways to keep the student pipeline growing. Some of her work involves educating the school’s staff members on the industry and its merits, so they can, in turn, encourage their students to consider the program.

This involves explaining what a semiconductor wafer is and even having her adult audience simulate making them out of Play-Doh. She talks about the different careers involved in the industry, and tells them about the locally-based companies in the industry.

“They get this holistic, broad overview of what the semiconductor industry is,” she said.

Schools across the country consider how to meet workforce demands

As the demand grows for trained future employees in fields related to emerging technology—such as semiconductor manufacturing, cybersecurity, aviation, or advanced manufacturing, or other burgeoning industries—more school districts across the country may be seeking out industry and educational partners to build CTE programs like the one in Hamilton High.

Already, Hartkopf has fielded calls about the program from districts as far-reaching as Wisconsin and California, and she will be attending an upcoming national CTE conference to spread the word.

Other related classes and programs have begun to crop up elsewhere. The Princeton Independent school system in Texas this year added a class in electrical engineering technology for seniors that it says will prepare graduates for employment with Texas Instruments, a large semiconductor manufacturer; it plans to expand to a two-year program in the future.

The Taylor Independent school district, also in Texas, recently launched an electronics technology program that includes but doesn’t focus exclusively on the semiconductor industry. Samsung Austin Semiconductor donated $1 million to fund the program’s laboratory and equipment.

Some of the momentum for supporting training programs for the semiconductor industry is occurring at the college level. The Association for Career and Technical Education identified three programs focused on the sector: in Florida, Illinois, and Arizona’s Maricopa County, where Chandler is located.

Community college-based CTE programs in emerging technology areas can be more specialized, evolve faster, and and often provide students with a set of skills closer to the labor market than high schools, said Alisha Hyslop, chief policy, research, and content officer for the association. Plus, they can offer dual-enrollment credit to students in related high school-based programs.

But finding knowledgeable instructors to teach at either the high school or college level is a challenge. Pay is a big stumbling block.

“In cybersecurity, semiconductor, or other emerging tech jobs, an individual could make three or four times more than teaching,” Hyslop said.

Positioning students for success

In Chandler Unified, Muñoz teaches all three sections of the semiconductor classes, working with a total of 48 students. Toward the end of his nearly 30-year career, Muñoz managed employees at Intel, a job he says isn’t too different than “managing” a classroom of high school students.

He sees the benefit in introducing students early to the many facets of the semiconductor arena. “We’re gonna try to expose them as much to the whole industry, so they can make better choices” when choosing a major or career path, he said.

As for Alina, the senior at Hamilton High School, she seems to have a strong grasp of her next moves after graduation.

“I want to work at Intel for a few years,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ll stay in the semiconductor industry, but I’ll definitely stay in the tech industry,” which means having to know “the basic stuff that it’s comprised of.”

Eventually, Alina said, she figures she’ll get a degree in engineering of some sort, maybe manufacturing or mechanical engineering, after being in the workforce for a few years—or possibly while in it.

Alina observes that she’ll likely be the first person in her family to get a bachelor’s degree. Maybe, she says, even a Ph.D.

“My parents, they’re technicians. It’s surprising how far they’ve gotten with such little education,” Alina said. “It shows that experience goes a long way, right?”