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Do you recruit or hire IT and network operations people for your organization? If so, the Mid-Pacific Information and Communication (ICT) Center would like your input to our effort to match ICT workforce supply to the demand.

As you know, ICT continues to experience strong and consistent growth worldwide. That growth is driven by increasing demands from individuals and organizations of all kinds for advanced ICT infrastructure, operations, management, and support. Highly skilled ICT technicians are critical not only for information technology employers, but also across a wide range of other industries. Yet, employers are having difficulties hiring appropriately skilled people, even in this period of high unemployment. Many of these jobs are open and the need for such positions in California alone is expected to grow by 30,000 between 2011 and 2013, on top of 80,000 replacement positions in the same period.

A significant number of these technicians receive their education, training and certification at community colleges. To enhance education initiatives in this field, the National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program has awarded a 4-year, $3 million grant to establish the Mid-Pacific ICT (MPICT) Center, at City College of San Francisco. MPICT is entering the fourth year of this grant with a mission to coordinate, promote and improve the quality of ICT education, with an emphasis on 2-year colleges, in a region consisting of northern California, northern Nevada, southern Oregon, Hawaii and the Pacific Territories.

A strategic endeavor to accomplish this mission is to seek the input of people who understand the strategic importance of improving ICT education and workforce development. The MPICT Advisory Panel has been invaluable in informing our efforts, many of the participants being industry leaders. Considering that ICT workforce occupations span and are strategically important to all industries and most organizations, we are seeking more representation from individuals that can inform us of the demand for ICT workforce in non-IT industries, such as health care, energy, finance, and retail, for example.

This is where you come in. We’re seeking individuals in non-IT businesses who have knowledge of the ICT operations and workforce needs of their organizations. I’d like to invite you to our next Advisory Panel meeting on December 2nd.  This is a twice-a-year opportunity to collaborate with MPICT and your peers at companies such as Cisco, Oracle, VMware, Juniper Networks, HP and IBM, to name a few, to influence ICT education at 75 community colleges, plus the high schools and 4-year colleges and universities they articulate with. For more details, please click on the links above.

I’m truly enjoying this new role with MPICT and I sincerely appreciate your support. Please call or email me if you’re interested in becoming an advisor.

Best,

Olivia

oherriford@mpict.org

925-930-7137

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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