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[Frame this better to include a statement regarding the success of the microchip training program.] In a major leap forward into the 21st century, Austin Community College and the Austin-based high-tech consortium Sematech announced a $4 million internship program to train engineers and technicians for 21st-century jobs in the field of nanoelectronics. Developers of electronic devices and components had for decades been downsizing their products, including miniature transistors descended from those that had powered the popular portable broadcast-band radios that became the rage in Europe, Asia, and America in the early 1950s.

In the early 21st Century, micro-engineering continued to follow the logical progression in downsizing integrated circuit components that enabled engineers to design and build incredibly tiny integrated circuits. “Nanotechnology,” encompassing circuits no larger than a billionth of a meter mounted on tiny silicon “chips,” defined the latest in digital technology.

In the short term, the sudden growth of nanotechnology signaled that the the recession following the collapse of microchip and “dot-com” internet-based markets in 2001 had brought the local economy to its knees. Austin was becoming an important new stage for microchip development and manufacturing. Austin Community College was involved in training technicians and engineers in nanotechnology. At the outset, officials anticipated an enrollment of 160 students, half of whom would be ACC students with others coming from the University of Texas at Austin and Texas State Technical College in Waco. Instruction will take place in facilities located in southeast Austin.

Mike Midgley, ACC’s Vice President of Workforce Education and Business Development, said: “The timing on it is particularly good given the resurgence of the industry as a whole.” This was “one of the first major efforts by ACC to start building the region’s supply of nanotechnicians since the semiconductor slump in 2001.”

 

Source: https://statesman.newsbank.com/doc/news/113016934C143960?search_terms April 18, 2006