Kenny McGee, CEO and Founder, Component Sense

There's an ongoing tension between higher level academia and industry over whose responsibility it is to prepare the next generation for job readiness. Academia puts up guardrails that, in theory, allow the practice of focused and uncorrupted research and learning. But those same guardrails do not just "protect" those inside from outside influence, but to a certain extent ensures a degree of ignorance of what's happening in the working world.

One major issue with integrating industry and academia, however, is that for every program the former wants to add to the college curriculum, another one must come out. Students have to graduate eventually, after all! It's a truism most curriculum developers are ignoring or perhaps even unaware of, however.

We are overcoming the inertia, I’m proud to say. 2024 marked the first adoption of our Certified Printed Circuit Designer training program by a U.S. university. That came about after countless hours of hands-on development and refining to tailor the CPCD program to the modern student. This year, we expect to leverage that effort with additional academic licensees, and even a prominent public-private consortium. If we want the next generation of engineers to choose electronics, we need to actively recruit them where they live and play.

In addition, we are adding to our traditional industry-leading events – PCB West and PCB East –a new technical conference on the campus of Wayne State University in Detroit in June. It's all part of our mission to help printed circuit engineers and professionals engage with their careers and with each other.