Industry Demand & Engagement

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool for configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. With increasing demand for cloud employees, Columbus State and Northern Virginia community colleges aim to provide an academic gateway for the next generation of IT and cloud professionals.

Industry Trends and Job Growth

Technology is a key industrial sector in the Central Ohio region. According to Columbus 2020, the regional economic development agency, the area hosts more than 2,100 technology-focused businesses and nearly 60,000 individuals are employed in the technology sector. The state’s economic-development agency, JobsOhio, identified information technology as a targeted industry for continued growth (JobsOhio, 2016). Columbus was ranked the third-best city statewide for technology job prospects and is the eighth-fastest-growing technology job market in the United States.

Northern Virginia has a large, established IT sector with over 13,000 technology-focused businesses and approximately 221,000 employed IT professionals throughout the region (JobsEQ, 2017). Between September 2016 and August 2017, there were over 97,000 job postings for IT professionals in the Northern Virginia region, equaling almost half of the active IT workforce (Burning Glass, 2017).

Cloud Advisory Board

The Columbus State Community College’s Department of Computer Science and the CLOUD project team engaged with the department’s Advisory Board to collect feedback from industry on the most important skills and competencies in cloud computing, informing the team on the specific skills they prefer graduates to possess.

Feedback from the meeting informed updates to the Software Developer AAS with a cloud specialization, along with several course revisions for the program. A second meeting was held to report back on the progress of the curriculum, provide updates on the approach of the curriculum design, and to solicit feedback on the proposed updates to the degree and courses. Future engagement with the Advisory Board will continue as the project team works towards the development of the final curriculum.