We’ve been working on an idea for a fresh newsletter from Jared to better serve our amazing Community of Practice. We welcome your input and feedback as we tweak and shift to get it right. Thanks for being here.
For the record, we value our entire MNT community, but we’ve felt for a while that those on the front lines of community college work and who meet more often as a group to discuss how to serve the many students in the USA with advanced technology training, need their own thing…
We published only the internships and jobs on This Week in Small as we sent out the full MailChimp newsletter announcement. But we also posted the entire newsletter (including jobs and internships) here as well. TWIS changes more often, but is still shareable, and this post will survive a few more weeks and be more visible in the news section.
Community of Practice | Issue 01 | May 2026
A newsletter for the micro and nano technology education community — opportunities, resources, and news for the people doing the real work at community colleges across the country. This month we’re publishing the full issue here on Think Small as a launch post. Student opportunities are listed first. Share freely with students, advisors, and colleagues.
A Note from Jared
Welcome to Issue 01 of our new Community of Practice newsletter. We’ve been building toward this for a while — a regular, useful briefing for the people doing the real work of micro and nano technology education at community colleges across the country. We’ll keep it tight. Jobs, Internships, Opportunities, Events, and the occasional resource worth passing along to your students or colleagues. We’re glad you’re here.
— Jared Ashcroft, PI, MNT-EC at Pasadena City College
P.S. In our first few months, we will mail to the entire MNT community, but our intent is to focus this down to the smaller set of Community of Practice members. My email is below — message me to learn more.
Community Shout-Out
Community College of Philadelphia — Dr. Dominic Salerno and his students in the Biomedical Technician Training Program are doing exactly the kind of hands-on, industry-ready work this community exists to support. Gowning up for clean room training, building real lab skills, connecting students to biomedical careers. This is the model. We’re glad to have CCP in this network.
Connect with Dominic on LinkedIn | Biomedical Technician Training Program
Student Opportunities
Student opportunities first. Two Corning co-ops are open specifically for North Carolina community college students — one in Concord and one in Wilmington. TSMC Arizona has Summer 2026 internship openings in facility roles in Phoenix, and Micron has a process technician internship open at sites in Boise, ID and Manassas, VA.
Corning — Manufacturing Co-op for NC Community College Students | Concord, NC
Co-op opportunity specifically for North Carolina community college students. Hands-on manufacturing experience at Corning’s Concord facility.
View posting
Corning — NC Community College Student Co-op | Wilmington, NC
Second Corning co-op for NC community college students, based in Wilmington.
View posting
TSMC Arizona — Summer 2026 Internship Opportunities (Facility Roles) | Phoenix, AZ
Multiple facility-track summer internship openings at TSMC’s Arizona fab. Ideal for students in electronics, manufacturing technology, or engineering programs.
View posting
Micron — Intern, Process Technician | Boise, ID or Manassas, VA
Process technician internship open at two Micron sites.
View posting
Career and Technician Roles
Southwest — Arizona
TSMC Arizona — Failure Analysis Technician | Phoenix, AZ
View posting
TSMC Arizona — Process Technician | Phoenix, AZ
View posting
TSMC Arizona — Manufacturing Specialist Trainee | Phoenix, AZ
View posting
TSMC Arizona — Junior Electrical Technician | Phoenix, AZ
View posting
Mountain West — Idaho
Micron — Manufacturing Process Technician, Advanced Packaging | Boise, ID
View posting
Micron — Equipment Technician, APTD | Boise, ID
View posting
Northeast — New York
Corning — Optical Manufacturing Technician | Fairport, NY
View posting
GlobalFoundries — Maintenance Technician Apprenticeship | Malta, NY
An apprenticeship pathway with GlobalFoundries. Strong model for programs exploring earn-while-you-learn partnerships.
View program info
Southeast — North Carolina
Thermo Fisher Scientific — Formulation Technician II | Greenville, NC
View posting
Thermo Fisher Scientific — Multi-Craft Maintenance Technician (Days) | Greenville, NC
View posting
Thermo Fisher Scientific — Multi-Craft Maintenance Technician | Greenville, NC
View posting
Thermo Fisher Scientific — Lead QA Technician | Greenville, NC
View posting
Thermo Fisher Scientific — Lead Formulation Technician | Greenville, NC
View posting
Thermo Fisher Scientific — Stationary Engineer / Sr. Manufacturing Maintenance Technician | Greenville, NC
View posting
Grants and Funding
NSF ATE remains the primary federal funder for two-year college technology programs and is worth knowing well if you’re not already engaged. The NSF TA-ESW initiative, a joint effort with the Micron Foundation, is supporting transformative approaches to semiconductor workforce education specifically. Both are worth a look if you’re considering a proposal.
NSF ATE — Advanced Technological Education
Learn more
NSF TA-ESW — Transformative Approaches to Educating the Semiconductor Workforce
Learn more
NNME Regional Nodes
Awards expected Spring 2026. Up to $20M per node over five years to build regional microelectronics workforce infrastructure.
Learn more
Events and Deadlines
Two dates for your calendar. If your institution submitted an LOI for the NSF NQNI solicitation, full proposals are due May 14. And the 2026 Embedded Vision Summit runs May 11–13 in Santa Clara — relevant if you have programs touching computer vision, sensors, or applied semiconductor work.
NSF NQNI Full Proposals Due — May 14, 2026
Solicitation details
2026 Embedded Vision Summit — May 11–13 | Santa Clara, CA
Learn more
Useful Resources
These two are oldies but goodies — both 7 to 10 years old and still among the best starting points we’ve found for students new to nanoscale work. Zoom into a Microchip takes viewers from human scale down to chip-level features and works well as a first-day primer. Pair it with the Visual Capitalist particle size infographic for a quick one-two on why scale matters in this field.
Zoom into a Microchip
Watch on Vimeo
Visual Capitalist — Relative Size of Particles Infographic
View infographic
Also Worth Knowing
If you’re not already following APT Friday, it’s worth your time. Christine Galib at Princeton curates a weekly briefing for the Advancing Photonics Technologies community — events, jobs, funding, and shout-outs at the photonics and microelectronics intersection. Adjacent to what we do and genuinely good. Her newsletter is a big inspiration for this one — thank you, Christine.
One Question for You
We read every response. Here’s our question for this issue:
What’s one resource you wish more of your students knew about before they enrolled?
Share your answer here — we may feature it in Issue 02.
Thanks for reading. If something here is useful to a colleague, please forward it along.
–Follow MNT-EC on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/mnt-ec
–News and resources: Think Small at MNT-EC
–Questions or news to share? JMASHCROFT@Pasadena.edu
— Jared
Building the workforce, one program at a time.
