Broadening the Semiconductor Talent Pipeline with Non-Engineering Students

The CHIPs Act highlights the vulnerability of the US semiconductor supply chain and its desire to reduce risk and promote US-based manufacturing. One of the six program priorities includes workforce development. At the university level, these programs traditionally focus on training engineering students for employment opportunities while excluding other STEM majors such as computer science. In this paper, we describe our effort at the University of South Alabama to broaden the workforce by training non-engineering students to use advanced equipment for hardware security and assurance. We detail our initial framework for training computer science students and developing related job skills while providing recommendations for other interested academic institutions.