Promoting IT in Electronic Packaging education at Technical University of Cluj-Napoca

The Electronic Packaging educational process at Technical University of Cluj-Napoca is mainly strengthened at the Faculty of Electronics and Telecommunications. The study curricula of the Faculty's specializations (Applied Electronics and Communications) include long-term courses focused on the next domains: basis of electronics, electronic circuits and devices, signals and systems, programming and technological design. Packaging related aspects are mainly covered by the technological design and electronic circuit's courses. The paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the prevalence of such Electronic Packaging information in our curricula during the past ten years. The curricula restructuring process relies on the continuous adaptation and updating of the delivered teaching activities in order to compensate the main drawbacks of the last years: the student's change of professional interest from hardware design to software design and the technological gap between our current equipment endowment and the current level of technology worldwide required. Thus, the process of upgrading the equipment involved promoting actions for the IT features and benefits in design and teaching processes. The paper presents the main strategy to include IT features in Electronic Packaging teaching process. The strategy covers a large domain: from modern CAD tools to Internet access to relevant and useful information and even by creating new virtual platforms for Electronic Packaging lab sessions (e.g. using Matlab). The study also covers the impact of the described actions: the new openings in developing professional relations with Electronics Packaging relating enterprises or Research centres, the increased professional value of our graduates providing those better ways to fit the industry needs.