For a few months in 2009, I took part in the Certified Nanotechnology Clean Technology Certification (CNCP) course offered by the California Institute of Nanotechnology in San Jose, USA. This article is an overview of the course as it was presented at that time, and is meant to provide guidance for prospective students, critique the offering, and identify alternative courses available in California’s Silicon Valley.
I discovered the CNCP course on Craigslist, while adding events to our Cleantech Authority Events Calendar. I called the director of the program, Lloyd Tran, at (408) 280-6266, and drove to the site headquarters at 1290 Parkmoor Avenue in San Jose. At this time, the course was being offered in only one location, but since then a branch has opened at 6080 Center Drive in Los Angeles — telephone (310) 220-4365.
It is worth noting that the California Institute of Nanotechnology, the International Association of Nanotechnology (IANANO), and the Clean Tech Institute are all interrelated organizations. I imagine the various naming schemes are a way to raise funds and garner interest from different groups of students. However, I think this makes it harder to distinguish the structure of the program, and may even raise students’ expectations for a focused certification agenda; in my experience, the course was unfocused and too broad in its approach.
After befriending the staff and further reviewing the course materials, I chose to enroll and paid close to $4,000 (including registration fees) for a spot in the class. This is a substantial tuition fee, and indeed, I had second thoughts. One of the options is monthly payments or you can get a discount for up-front payment. There is also a partial refund available to students who drop out within the first week. This comforted me, but truthfully the first class had very little substance and was spent making contacts and creating groups. There was no way to determine the overall worth of the course during that time.
Establishing a network in clean technology and the nanotech space is one of the more valuable benefits of the CNCP course. The people in my class ranged from successful international entrepreneurs and chemists to a doctor planning a return to China under the CNCP’s “Sea Turtle” sponsorship program (which brings entrepreneurs back from the USA). A few people had recently lost their jobs at Genentech and other leading firms in the area. Overall, it was a very smart and driven group. I was one of the younger students (at age 25); most of my classmates were in their 30s and 40s. Much of the staff running the program is made up of past students. Some of the students have gone on to start small companies, and building a small business is covered and promoted during multiple lectures, but none of the companies had really taken off at the time I took the course.
In addition to the entrepreneurial spirit that the course fosters, one of the core CNCP offerings is help in locating a new full-time corporate-style job. In fact, the CNCP course is marketed as a way for those with traditional project management or engineering skill sets to transition into the emerging clean technology sector. The certification is meant to provide an edge when competing against other applicants who may have the skills, but lack the broad background, vocabulary, connections and up-to-date knowledge of these new industries. Just how recognized CNCP certification actually is may be up for debate. Considering that roughly half of my classmates were unemployed or looking to switch jobs, this focus on finding a new job was a good fit, but hard to measure in terms of success and job placement.
The CNCP program staffs job development and outreach managers whose objective it is to work one-on-one with students in order to place them in apprenticeships, internships, and full-time jobs. To this end, there is a bulletin board positioned outside the classroom with printouts advertising the latest jobs sourced by CNCP coordinators. While these jobs were marketed by the CNCP as being “exclusive”, I found many of them advertised elsewhere, and I did not hear back from any employers, even though I referenced my involvement with the CNCP. I suppose most employers are just overwhelmed with the sheer number of applicants trying to get a job right now. I cannot speak for other classmates, but I call the job search opportunity a mixed bag and a less valuable resource than I had hoped for.
Our classes were held weekly, on Saturdays, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Some days went longer, to 6 p.m., and others ended early at 2:30 p.m. to allow team meetings for group projects. The two group projects are meant to bring students together and to foster creativity in the nanotech and clean-tech space. They reminded me of group projects I did in the undergraduate business program at the University of Colorado at Boulder. This was one of the more interesting and useful parts of the course.
With the culmination of each project, the groups were asked to do professional presentations to the rest of the class. In this way, each group teaches the rest of the class about their area of focus. After all presentations are complete, points are awarded to the “best” business plans, and these points are factored into the students’ final grades. In the end, though, I never received an official grade at all, and one of the assignments I turned in was either lost or ignored by the staff, as it is still outstanding despite multiple email follow ups.
Considering that the group projects were one of the more valuable and interesting parts of the class, they were not what I expected from a certification-style offering. I’m not sure that the best way to create clean-tech “professionals” is to allow students to randomly choose topics relating to nanotechnology or clean tech, and then let them do their own research and teach weakly-supported topics to each other. Again, the course is high-priced for a DIY (do-it-yourself) approach, and in my opinion, there was a huge lack of structure, direction and discipline on the group projects.
A typical day in the CNCP course was roughly structured as follows: Two 1.5-hour lectures by CNCP staff (sometimes Lloyd Tran or an industry representative), a lunch break, two more 1.5-hour lectures, then a group meeting and wrap. Several lectures were dedicated to the training and use of a scanning electron microscope.
In terms of teaching materials, each lecture provided students with 20-50 sheets of single-sided notes to be kept in a three-ring binder provided on the first day. Considering that the class is focused on “clean tech”, I was disappointed with the amount of paper used, and frustrated that they weren’t offered in digital form — nearly every student brought a laptop to class, and digital notes would have made studying a lot easier in terms of searchability and addendums. In an effort to keep my own notes organized, I asked every single member of the staff for digital copies of our class notes, and I even asked the speakers for their PowerPoint slides, but never received them.
I signed up for the course specifically to learn more about clean technology, solar, wind, electric cars… and to get certification. So was the course worth it? Would I recommend it to others looking to broaden their knowledge of the clean tech space? Maybe. But this course is not for someone who has already been following these industries on his/her own. $4K is a lot of money to pay for a class that spends over half of its students’ time focusing on nanotechnology. Over five hours alone were spent using an outdated Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), and while interesting, this is not a skill I will use.
The program director assured us that nanotechnology is playing a key role in new clean-tech industries, but I’m not convinced, perhaps because I have a business marketing background and I am not an engineer. (To enroll in the class you have to pass an hour-long math/science test with over 50 questions. I scored 98%, so it’s not as if I couldn’t understand the nanotech science stuff, it just wasn’t relevant to me.) I was told that so much of the course is focused on nanotechnology partly because much of the funding comes from government grants established by that industry.
Unfortunately for me and others with less of an interest in nanotechnology, only one day was devoted to solar technology and a mere half-day to wind and electric powered vehicles. Some of the speakers (probably recruited as volunteers from the surrounding area) sounded more like salesmen than teachers. In saying this, I mean no disrespect for those individuals who took the time to come in and share their knowledge with us. There were three lectures I can clearly remember as great learning, but I found myself nodding off and/or doing other stuff during too many other lectures. The truth is, if I had not paid so much to take the course, I would have ditched a few of the sessions (as many of my classmates ended up doing). But because I wanted my money’s worth, I attended every single lecture, SEM lab, and every out-of-class lunch session.
So what are the alternatives? There are two other options in the Bay Area that I consider to be both valuable and affordable (see below). While neither offers certification, they are much more informative and actionable than the CNCP, in my experience.
My first recommendation is the Continuing Studies Program at Stanford University. As the same time I was taking the CNCP course, I was also taking What’s the Real Deal with Oil, Gas, and Coal?, offered by Stanford’s Energy Resource Engineering Department. This course meets once a week for two hours and costs only $300. It was taught by a focused expert who spoke easily-understood English (another drawback of several of the CNCP lectures). It helped me to frame my thoughts on where energy comes from and how clean technology fits into the world’s future. Unlike the CNCP course, there were many things in this course that I could not have learned from browsing the web independently. Unfortunately, this particular course will not be taught again for a while. If you’re interested in this study topic, though, I can recommend the book Oil 101 by Morgan Downey. It is an excellent history of the world and oil’s role within it. Stanford also offers another course called Clean Tech Entrepreneurship, which I subsequently attended and enjoyed very much — the networking alone was worth it.
For those who want a hands-on, mechanical-engineering approach to clean technology, there is a company in Redwood City, CA (just south of San Francisco on 101) called the TechShop, which refers to itself as an “open access public workshop”. They allow community members to use advanced tools, and to learn new skills in construction, computer coding, and project development. While not all of the courses are clean-tech related, they are some of the most affordable and useful classes I’ve taken anywhere, and could probably be used to learn how to install solar panels, do basic chip programming, and work on electric vehicles.
In conclusion, I am optimistic about the CNCP’s potential to teach and connect people to clean-tech jobs in the community, but I see room for improvement. If you took the course or have questions or comments, please post them here. And if you are looking for jobs in the clean-tech space, consider the jobs posted on our sister site at http://greenjobsauthority.com.
