Andy Shaughnessy wrote a very nice piece entitled "Who will design tomorrow's PCB's?" in October's issue of PCD&M. If you haven't read it yet I highly recommend that you get a copy of the magazine and read it. How true, Andy, that we are really facing the potential extinction of the PCB designer in North America if things continue without some real focus and energy put into training new people to adopt this career as their own. IEEE and other professional organizations put funds and effort into promoting their profession to colleges and universities, in conjunction with support from the companies that wish to hire EE's and technical professionals. Our schools are being pounded by legislation and funding cuts that keep the training needed for most vocational pursuits from even being offered and the managers of the colleges have been more in love with academics and MBA's rather than 'Engineering' as a career path. We need to lobby and put effort into the promotion of this career path, and create technical materials that the colleges can use to base their courses on to enable them to train the next generation of designers. PCB design is not nearly as simple as it used to be... there is much more material the designers need to know in order to compete in this changing field. I am currently studying for the IPC DC CID+ certification workshop and test to be held here in San Diego Oct 14-16. Many designers are seeing the need to get professional certification and broaden their knowledge and experience to be able to get the type of boards that are being designed today. I have proposed that the IPC DC support the creation of a College level textbook that teachers could use to teach PCB design in the community colleges and we have a group of designers that are members that are on a college education committee that work together to help promote the programs you mention in your article at Collin County College in Texas, and other sites around the world. There is a page on the DC website that lists the current colleges we are working with to get PCB Design into the college students to help promote our profession to young minds that are searching for a future career. http://www.ipcdesignerscouncil.org/education/schools.htm I want to thank you for bringing this topic to the attention of the readers of PCD&M. We need more focus like this to help others to get inspired to get involved. We don't want to see this profession loose it's edge or falter due to the retirement of our exceptional and highly experienced colleagues over the next ten years. Anyone who wants to get involved or has questions can e-mail me or any of the members of the IPC DC staff. Best regards, Bill Brooks PCB Design Engineer , C.I.D., C.I.I. Tel: (760)597-1500 Ext 3772 Fax: (760)597-1510 http://pcbwizards.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DesignerCouncil Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF DesignerCouncil. To temporarily stop/(restart) delivery of DesignerCouncil send: SET DesignerCouncil NOMAIL/(MAIL) Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail Archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------