UNM’s COSMIAC Program Takes Sophisticated Technology to Community College Instructors

A Cen­ter in UNM’s School of Engi­neer­ing is tak­ing the most dif­fi­cult and sophis­ti­cated com­puter chip tech­nol­ogy and teach­ing the teach­ers– who will teach the stu­dents– who will be on the fore­front of build­ing an econ­omy based on imag­i­na­tion and tech­ni­cal skills.

The Con­fig­urable Space Microsys­tems Inno­va­tions & Appli­ca­tions Cen­ter (COSMIAC) is instruct­ing fac­ulty mem­bers from com­mu­nity col­leges all over the South and South­west how to teach courses with Hard­ware Descrip­tion Lan­guages (HDL) so their stu­dents can design with Field Pro­gram­ma­ble Gate Array (FPGA) com­puter chips.  It’s not easy.

FPGA com­puter chips are called chameleon chips because they can be repro­grammed after they have been man­u­fac­tured.  For exam­ple, a chip that is placed in a satel­lite and shot into space to enable a cam­era to pho­to­graph water evap­o­ra­tion in Cal­i­for­nia forests could be remotely repro­grammed to enable a cam­era to mon­i­tor traf­fic jams in Cal­i­for­nia cities. But it takes a very spe­cial set of skills to repro­gram the chip.  The goal of COSMIAC and their team of com­mu­nity col­lege part­ners is to teach fac­ulty mem­bers in com­mu­nity col­leges to teach the needed skills to their students.

Last week, fac­ulty mem­bers from Luna Com­mu­nity Col­lege attended class at COSMIAC.  They intend to offer a class on pro­gram­ming FPGA chips next aca­d­e­mic year, even though there are no com­pa­nies in Las Vegas, New Mex­ico that use these kind of chips.  The fac­ulty mem­bers hope the ten or so stu­dents expected in class will get an Asso­ciate Degree and come to UNM or some larger col­lege where they can get a full range of classes and have job oppor­tu­ni­ties.  Accord­ing to Craig Kief, deputy direc­tor of COSMIAC, this type of new tech­nol­ogy is crit­i­cal for com­mu­nity col­lege instruc­tors to be able to pro­vide their stu­dents with the skills cur­rent indus­try demands.

FPGA chip pro­gram­ming is much more than learn­ing the com­puter lan­guage to change the job of the com­puter chip.  It’s also re-thinking the way changes can be made so the chip can work most effi­ciently with the hard­ware at hand in a remote and hos­tile envi­ron­ment such as space.  So the art in the teach­ing job is find­ing a way to unleash the tech­no­log­i­cal imag­i­na­tion of stu­dents who may come into class just look­ing for skills to get a job at a decent salary.

This sum­mer fac­ulty mem­bers from Ari­zona State Uni­ver­sity, West­ern Col­lege, South Moun­tain Com­mu­nity Col­lege, Glen­dale Com­mu­nity Col­lege, East­ern Ari­zona Col­lege, Cochise Com­mu­nity Col­lege, Chandler/Gilbert Com­mu­nity Col­lege, Glen­dale Com­mu­nity Col­lege, Cen­tral Ari­zona Col­lege, Mesa Com­mu­nity Col­lege, JF Drake State Tech­ni­cal Col­lege, San Juan Com­mu­nity Col­lege, Cen­tral New Mex­ico Com­mu­nity Col­lege, Luna Com­mu­nity Col­lege, Dona Ana Com­mu­nity Col­lege, South­west Indian Poly­tech­nic Insti­tute, Alabama A&M Uni­ver­sity, Bishop State Com­mu­nity Col­lege, South­ern Union Com­mu­nity Col­lege and Enter­prise State Com­mu­nity Col­lege were taught by COSMIAC and their team of skilled com­mu­nity col­lege part­ners to learn the skills they need to teach the courses at their schools.  COSMIAC experts use Skype exten­sively, so when a fac­ulty mem­ber is fac­ing a dif­fi­cult part of the cur­ricu­lum, they can bring in help via Skype to answer some of the questions.

It is very com­plex to build a work­force in a field that is com­pletely dif­fer­ent from any­thing that’s gone before.  Most stu­dents and fac­ulty mem­bers don’t have back­grounds that relate to these skills, but some­one has to be on the cut­ting edge, and after all, some­one had to learn to repair the first car.

The project is funded by the National Sci­ence Foundation’s Advanced Tech­no­log­i­cal Edu­ca­tion grant pro­gram.  COSMIAC has three pri­mary areas of inter­est.  They include Research & Devel­op­ment, Work­force Devel­op­ment and Edu­ca­tional Outreach.

Media con­tact: Karen Went­worth (505) 277‑5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu