Santa Barbara City College’s (SBCC) development of a micro- and nanotechnology training boot camp, has benefited from
- the National Science Foundation’s decades of investment in curriculum and faculty professional development, particularly at the Support Center for Microsystems Education ( SCME);
- expansion of its longstanding partnerships with the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) to access cleanroom facilities; and
- new affiliations with companies that are seeking technicians with cleanroom experiences.
“The building of the relationships—of the connections with industry—that would not have happened if we didn't have that existing connection to UCSB ... having worked with them for a long time and then getting that connection to the NanoFab, which is the location where the industry partners come,” Jens-Uwe Kuhn explained in an interview. He noted that many of the 45 high-tech companies in SBCC’s service area with employees working at the micro- and nanoscale rent space at times in UCSB’s facilities, which were built with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other entities.
Kuhn is the dean of Math and Sciences at SBCC and principal investigator of the Central Coast Partnership for Regional Industry Focused Micro/Nanotechnology Education (CC-PRIME), an Advanced Technological Education (ATE) project funded by NSF.
In the Journal of Advanced Technological Education article “Building a Micro/Nanotechnology Cleanroom Training,” Kuhn and Demis D. John, process scientist manager at UCSB, report on SBCC’s development of training for semiconductor manufacturing technicians without the community college having its own cleanroom. It is a challenge other colleges face because of the cost of building and running such facilities. CC-PRIME is also featured in ATE Impacts 2024-2025.