Targeted Infusion Project: Enhancing Undergraduate Education and Research in AI-Driven Microelectronics at Virginia State University through the Classroom to Cleanroom(C2C) Pathway

Virginia State University seeks to advance knowledge in STEM undergraduate education by establishing an innovative Classroom-to-Cleanroom educational pathway integrating artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled microelectronics. The project responds to the growing national need for a highly skilled semiconductor workforce while expanding educational opportunities for students at a historically black university. Undergraduate students will engage in hands-on learning that connects classroom instruction with laboratory experiences, undergraduate research, faculty mentoring, and industry engagement. New educational opportunities will prepare students for graduate education and careers in semiconductor manufacturing and advanced technology industries while strengthening faculty expertise and institutional STEM research capacity. Through sustained collaboration with academic and industry partners, the project will establish a lasting educational resource that supports workforce development, expand student engagement in emerging technology fields, and provides a model that can be adapted by other institutions with similar missions. This project seeks to establish a microfabrication instructional laboratory and integrate experiential learning into two new undergraduate courses, while enhancing senior design experiences through applications in AI-enabled microelectronics. Faculty professional development, undergraduate research, structured mentoring, and partnerships with Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Micron Technology, and the Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing will strengthen curriculum, workforce preparation, and institutional research capacity. A comprehensive mixed-methods evaluation will examine student learning, technical competency, engineering identity, persistence, workforce readiness, faculty development, and partnership effectiveness to identify evidence-based practices for undergraduate engineering education. The project will generate transferable curriculum materials, mentoring practices, faculty development resources, assessment instruments, and implementation guidance that will be disseminated through publications, conferences, workshops, and open educational repositories. By producing generalizable evidence on integrating experiential learning, industry collaboration, faculty development, and instructional cleanroom experiences into undergraduate engineering education, the project will advance knowledge on scalable approaches for strengthening semiconductor education and workforce development at historically black colleges and universities and other institutions with similar interests. This award is funded by the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP), through Targeted Infusion Projects, which supports the development, implementation, and study of evidence-based, innovative models and approaches for improving the preparation and success of HBCU undergraduate students to pursue science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) graduate programs and/or careers. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.