SemiAcademy micro-credential
Semiconductor Strategy for Leaders (Industry, Policy and Workforce)
How history, economics, geopolitics and public money shape semiconductor decisions. Four modules and a capstone decision case, all scored automatically in Canvas.
Register for Semiconductor Strategy for Leaders (Industry, Policy and Workforce)
At a glance
- Time needed
- About 25 hours, at your own pace
- Level
- Introductory
- Who it is for
- Academic administrators, industry managers, government and economic-development staff, and workforce leaders; no engineering background needed
- Prerequisites
- None. No engineering background is needed.
- Format and what you need
- Online and self-paced; a web browser.
- Badge
- Semiconductor Strategy for Leaders (Industry, Policy and Workforce) digital badge
What you will be able to do
- Explain in nontechnical language what semiconductors and chips do, how they are produced, and where major business models fit in the value chain.
- Connect major technological milestones to changes in firms, markets, institutions, regions, and public policy.
- Interpret capital, scale, yield, utilization, cycle, forecast, and workforce claims with appropriate caveats.
- Map strategic semiconductor dependencies and distinguish concentration, chokepoints, exposure, vulnerability, and resilience.
- Record the main semiconductor risks for an organization or region in a register with owners, early-warning indicators, mitigation and residual risk, and combine resilience measures rather than relying on one.
- Evaluate industrial policy, incentives, and export controls against named objectives, evidence, implementation capacity, time horizons, and second-order effects.
- Define a problem before choosing a policy or program tool, and set owners, leading indicators, outcome measures and decision gates for the chosen intervention.
- Evaluate a semiconductor decision the way a strong decision memorandum would: its recommendation, the strongest counterarguments, its key assumptions, and what would make it wrong.
How the course is organized
- Start Here — Course Orientation
- Module 1 — How the Industry Actually Works
- Module 2 — How We Got Here: 1947 to the Fabless World
- Module 3 — Chips as Statecraft
- Module 4 — Money, Cycles, and the Talent Pipeline
- Capstone — The Tri-River Fab Decision Case
- Course Completion
How to earn the badge
- Complete every required item in Modules 1 to 4 and the Capstone. The optional activities and discussions are not required.
- Clear each module’s pass mark , 80% of its knowledge checks and quiz together: 124 of 154 (Module 1), 116 of 144 (Module 2), 122 of 152 (Module 3), 108 of 134 (Module 4).
- Score at least 80 of 100 on the Capstone Decision Case .
- Complete the pre- and post-course surveys .
Read that second point carefully, because it is the one that catches people: a module below its own pass mark does not pass, however healthy your overall total looks . Clearing every part works out to at least 550 of the 684 points, but each module is tested on its own.