Columbus State Community College, in Columbus, Ohio, today announced it is going to start a new two-year degree program that will lead students to pursue a career in cloud computing. The program is being developed in partnership with Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) and Amazon Web Services Educate.
Todd Warner, executive in residence for workforce innovation at Columbus State, said the school is currently updating existing courses at the community college with cloud computing curriculum, while the new program is set to start in the fall of 2020.
“This is another step forward in keeping our academic programs relevant and meeting the needs of employers and what they’re looking for,” Warner said.
The program will be an associate of applied science in software development, and Columbus State has been awarded a nearly $600,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to create the curriculum.
“It allows us to provide a student body of work that they can show a potential employer,” Warner said. “It gives them context to understand what I built in one class is used in the next.”
Columbus State’s partner in developing the program, NOVA, first began offering a cloud computing specialization in the fall of 2018 as part of its Information Systems Technology associate of applied science degree. At the time of that announcement, NOVA said that it intended to share its cloud computing curriculum with other institutions and its goal was to “promote the global need of educators and students.”
