Austin Community College – a leader in semiconductor workforce training in Central Texas and recognized with federal grants from U.S. Representative Lloyd Doggett and donations from major manufacturers NXP and Samsung – is partnering with other companies to expand its semiconductor workforce training program national level, officials announced Wednesday.
“It’s about Central Texas, but we’re about to be at the center of the country and the world,” said ACC Chancellor Lowery-Hart. “A world being reshaped by the CHIPS Act and semiconductor work.”
Along with America’s Frontier Fund, workforce development nonprofit Merit America and the Texas Institute for Electronics, ACC is part of the Opportunity Coalition that will offer the university’s Advanced Manufacturing Production training program nationwide at no upfront cost. The new initiative will help low-wage workers across the country transition to advanced jobs in the advanced manufacturing sector through fast-track programs.
The program will first be piloted at Temple College and Central Texas College, Lowery-Hart said, and then expand to Arizona, New Mexico and Ohio. The pilot program, sponsored by the Dell Foundation, will launch in January with the goal of expanding nationally next fall, said Garrett Groves, ACC vice chancellor for strategic initiatives.
The coalition hopes to reach 20,000 apprentices and realize wage gains totaling $2 billion by 2030, ACC said in a news release, which in turn will help meet the nation’s growing workforce needs as manufacturing in the U.S. grows.
“Today is exciting because we are talking about what will happen. The power is in changing lives through what we have launched today,” said Lowery-Hart.
More: How UT and Austin Community College are helping address the needs of the semiconductor workforce
Semiconductor chips power electronics, from phones and cars to weapons. The recent move to strengthen this industry domestically comes amid a bipartisan federal effort to ensure the nation’s national security and self-reliance in a critical sector and to stimulate economic development. The CHIPS and Science Act, passed in 2022, devoted approximately $280 billion to expanding research and domestic manufacturing, and has been a major driver of change locally.
Central Texas has seen significant growth in the manufacturing industry, but a Workforce Solutions report last year found that Austin has “significant shortages” of manufacturing technicians — a job that requires more than a high school diploma but less than a four-year university course. metropolitan area due to its rapid growth. Mayor Kirk Watson said at Wednesday’s press conference that the new partnership will help everyone in Austin gain access to manufacturing jobs with wages that can support their families, and that it will “set a new standard for how cities use the power of technology and innovation to shape a better society.” world.”
“If we address the CHIPS Act and what’s happening in the industry the right way, if we approach this opportunity the way we should approach this opportunity, Austin and Central Texas will be the center of the universe,” he said. Watson. “That’s what people across the country expect to happen.”
The new program would allow a low-wage worker to “double” their salary in a month, said Jordan Blashek, president of America’s Frontier Fund.
Connor Diemand-Yauman, the co-CEO of Merit America, shared the story of a woman, Lily, who increased her salary from $17 an hour to $48 after a technical degree, a wage that allowed her to buy a house and support her family .
“There are about 70 million people like Lily in this country, low-wage workers stuck in dead-end jobs with no real opportunities for upward mobility,” he said. “If we can bring together world-class curriculum, coaching and world-class financing, we can help people like Lily make their American dream a reality.”
How ACC became a semiconductor training specialist
According to the partners, ACC represents the gold standard for the curriculum. Blashek said the investment platform and Merit America, which leads the coalition, joined together a year ago with the goal of creating a national training program to help strengthen the semiconductor workforce and move families out of low-wage jobs.
“Every person we talked to said, ‘You need to talk to ACC,’” Blashek said.
Lowery-Hart said it is ACC’s connection with workforce partners that makes the curriculum so strong. He said the new partnership integrates multiple Austin resources and will be transformative for the region.
“The world ahead of automation and robotics and science and AI and semiconductor manufacturing will require us to align and collaborate in ways we haven’t had to do before, and we are doing that. that’s what excites me the most,” Lowery-Hart said.
Grove added that ACC’s experience, expertise and employer partnerships make the college a “tremendous asset” nationally.
“The need is tremendous, but Austin is one of the few places where this has been done for a decade,” Grove said. “We are the in-house training provider for these companies. It seems like no other place in the country has been able to do this at the scale we have built.”
Alyssa Reinhart, director of the Texas Institute for Electronics, a semiconductor consortium sponsored by the University of Texas, called the Opportunity Coalition a “powerful commitment” to addressing the labor shortage. UT and ACC are building a Semiconductor Training Center that will provide hands-on programming to Central Texas students, she said, and the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s $840 million grant to the Texas Institute for Electronics to develop a semiconductor -to develop a microelectronic center for US defense. The department will provide opportunities for further training in areas of high demand. (ACC was awarded $7.5 million as one of the partner institutions, the only community college partner deployed to assist.)
“More than anything, this is about people,” she added.
Barbara Mink, a founding member of the ACC District who is leaving the university’s board after 24 years of service, said this is the kind of impact the school has always wanted to achieve.
“What Austin Community College does is respond to the needs of the community,” Mink said. “We went from 1,800 students to more than 70,000 with 11 campuses. … There was never a doubt that Austin Community College would be a force for Central Texas’ economic and social equity issues.”
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin Community College to pursue semiconductor training nationwide
