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Community colleges prepare students for data center jobs

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Community colleges prepare students for data center jobs

A recent graduate of the Amazon Web Services program at Germanna Community College, Barbara Powers hugged instructor Ben Sherman during the program’s graduation ceremony in November.

Powers said that after 39 years as a mom, “This is the first thing I’ve done for myself.”

Germanna’s AWS training is engaging students of all ages and backgrounds. The AWS Information Infrastructure Pre-Apprenticeship is a four-week program providing hands-on instruction that focuses on electrical, HVAC, mechanical and data center operations.

Students are given an overview of each of these disciplines with the intention that they will select a specific pathway to pursue after the program ends, according to Tina Lance, Dean of Business and Workforce Development at Germanna.

“With data centers coming into our service region,” Lance said, “it’s really important that we provide training to support the labor that not only builds them, but also maintains them. In order to increase awareness of data center-labor needs, Amazon Web Services partnered with Germanna to create a pre-apprenticeship course that provides an overview of each of these disciplines.”

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The AWS program graduated 20 students Nov. 8 in a ceremony at the Fredericksburg Area Campus in Spotsylvania. Students trained in the Germanna program are selected and compensated by Amazon.

Germanna’s partnerships with companies like AWS are key to staffing these facilities, Lance said.

In March, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin called Amazon Web Services’ $35 billion investment in Spotsylvania, Stafford, Caroline and Louisa counties “transformational,” adding that related community college training will prepare local people of all ages for high-paying jobs.

AWS will make the investment over the next 15 years to fill high-tech jobs, many of which pay well without a college education. The U.S. Department of Labor has given Germanna, along with Laurel Ridge, Northern Virginia, Piedmont Virginia, Rappahannock, Southside, Brightpoint and Reynolds Community colleges a total of $5 million in grants to provide training for students who will fill jobs at AWS.

An Amazon data center is also under construction in Culpeper.

Germanna will receive equipment and retrofitting of current facilities. The grant also funds licensing for the training for the next three years as part of the Pathways to Infrastructure Grant, which provides fiber optic training to students who will help install cables that transmit data to the new AWS data centers.

Youngkin stated, “What’s happening in our community college system is literally at the foundation of workforce development. … we’re blurring the lines with K through 12. We’re blurring the lines in higher ed, with people who are suddenly, at the age of 50, saying, ‘Listen, I’m going to do something else and find a pathway to get there.’ That’s what our community college system can do. It is a place to build bridges. It’s a place where opportunities are created. Germanna is literally the foundation for our future’s workforce.”

Sherrie Hill and her son Kavary, of Woodbridge, were part of the intensive training program with Amazon Web Services designed to prepare them for the careers that build, connect, power and operate the information infrastructure, such as data centers, proliferating across the Fredericksburg area.

The Hills were part of the first cohort of 20 students at Germanna to complete the AWS Information Infrastructure Pre-Apprenticeship program recently launched in Virginia, Mississippi, and Ohio.

“We started here because this is where we’re going to build infrastructure,” says Nick Lee-Romagnolo, AWS principal workforce development director. “There is a challenge with having people who can run a data center when there is no data center yet. They don’t have the skills. … So, the idea is to give people exposure to the entire information infrastructure.”

While the program doesn’t specifically train the students to work in data centers, it offers them a look at all the elements required to build and run one.

“All the skilled trades, the entire construction industry, anything you would think about for any large critical facility to be built — those are the skills we need,” Lee-Romagnolo says.

Sherrie Hill was already a Germanna student with an AWS cloud certification and some experience in JavaScript when she learned about the new I2PA program.

“My son and I kind of lucked out with both getting into the program together,” says Sherrie. “I wanted to join the new AWS infrastructure program because it was an opportunity to further my skills.”

Her 25-year-old son Kavary was already working in the HVAC industry when his mom encouraged him to join the program with her.

“It just caught my interest. My mom knows what I want to do and knew this would be the right path for me,” he says. “Once I saw the other programs, I fell in love with all of it. The fiber splicing was really appealing to me.”

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