On the Co-Evolution of Microelectronic Engineering Laboratories and Education at RIT

The undergraduate Microelectronic Engineering Program at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) has been in existence since 1982. The lecture and laboratory content of our program which educates future engineers in the fabrication of the integrated circuits that go into modern devices has been consistently challenged to keep pace. In addition, over the last two decades the advances in semiconductor technology has been applied to many more fields, such as, nanotechnology, MEMS, chemical and bio sensors, photovoltaics, energy harvesting and displays. Courses which provide the basic semiconductor processing foundation must be coupled with additional elective coursework in these areas as well as new lab requirements [3]. The complexity and cost of the evolving tool set along with tool maintenance puts an additional burden on faculty and staff as exemplified by the recent installation of our ASML Stepper. On top of the previously mentioned challenges, RIT has recently made the decision to convert from a ten week quarter-based academic calendar to a more traditional 15 week semester-based calendar, effective in the fall of 2013. The faculty, staff, industrial advisory board, students and alumni have all become involved in the process of re-evaluation and re-configuration of the courses within both the undergraduate and graduate curricula. There are fewer courses but the same number of topics. As a result some topics no longer appear as individually listed items on student transcripts but are still taught. In fact it has required that many topics that are kept in the curriculum be re-located to other courses (with varying degrees of cohesion). The conversion process results in a reduction in the number of overall courses but at the same time increases the number of lab courses over two semesters compared to the courses over four quarters. Many of the laboratory experiences in the cleanroom involve long equipment set-up and operation times that are not conducive to shorter (2 hour) lab blocks proposed under semesters. The cleanroom laboratory experiences on campus have been consistently identified as strengths of the program and it is expected that will not change under the new curriculum. This paper will address the inter-related issues of laboratory and curriculum development. This paper will also describe the configuration of the new curricula and new lab sequences and explain the curriculum improvement process as well as the thinking that went into the proposed changes. Details will be provided on the changes made to key courses such as the VLSI Process Simulation, our unique Nanolithography Courses and our Capstone Senior Design courses. Articulation agreements for transfer from 2 year colleges are also being revised at this time so that semester course credits will more seamlessly transfer. The changes also affect the courses that comprise a minor in Microelectronics and the paper will also describe the assessment plans used for various aspects of the programs. All of this is to ensure that RIT will continue to address semiconductor industry workforce issues by providing highly trained process, device, integration, characterization and yield engineers not just locally but nationally and internationally. The Microelectronics Program has established relationships with universities and research consortia in Belgium, France, Korea, and Singapore and other locations. The semester conversion will retain the required cooperative work experience requirements for which our programs are so well known. Within New York State, Global Foundries along with its partner Abu Dhabi has completed construction of a $7B semiconductor fabrication facility, started production and has reached 1,100 on-site employees.