Next generation of electronic packaging education at Georgia Tech Packaging Research Center

The Packaging Research Center (PRC), funded by NSF as one of its engineering centers in the US, views research and education being equally important in addressing the competitiveness need in electronic packaging in the next decade. The strategy to achieve this competitiveness goal involves two critical items: (1) development of next generation of technologies; and (2) development of human resources, by means of globally-competitive education to apply the technologies to the global market. The PRC views that four major education challenges must be addressed in order to meet the above need. These are: (1) system-level education. This is currently missing and includes technologies, manufacturing, business economics and management, global markets and foreign culture; (2) cross-discipline education: current university education is highly discipline-oriented, whereas electronic products are highly cross-disciplinary; (3) industry education: industry engineers are immersed in current, short term technologies and generally are not addressing the next generation needs; and (4) undergrad and pre-college education. To address the above challenge, an education strategy has been developed which consists of educational programs grouped into six strategic major categories: (1) undergraduate, (2) graduate; (3) under-represented outreach; (4) industry engineers; (5) national education; and (6) global education. This paper reviews all of these programs.