By Elliott Nace | Staff Writer
Baylor announced on April 14 it will participate alongside McLennan Community College and cyber education company General Assembly to offer students and professionals alike the opportunity to take two cyber skills courses. The initiative, which stemmed from a skill gap among technology professionals throughout the U.S., aims to provide additional certification and training to a wide variety of employees in the Waco community.
According to university spokesperson Lori Fogleman, the two courses will benefit from General Assembly’s structuring and the administrations of both Baylor and MCC.
Dr. Jeremy McCormick, program director and computer information systems professor at MCC, said the partnership reflects MCC’s vision of creative, innovative new ways of connecting students to professional opportunities.
“This collaboration is a win-win and supports this vision,” he said in a statement. “As partners, we will utilize all our assets to develop talent and reduce the cybersecurity workforce gap.”
Dr. Jeremy Vickers, associate vice president of innovation and economic development, said the university-wide effort was spearheaded by two federal grants, with the latter grant also featuring a collaboration with Central Texas College to sponsor diplomas ranging from certificates to master’s degrees in cybersecurity.
“One [grant] we’ve had for a few years from the Department of Education, and that built and launched something here at the BRIC which is called a Cyber Range that allows us to do some pretty heavy technical work in the cybersecurity world,” he said. “The second we won from the National Security Administration … and it’s to build out a network of programs to support next-generation cybersecurity workforce development [for] the future workers in our country that will actually do this work to protect industry, government and defense.”
According to Fogleman, the Python Programming Short course, which will run for seven weeks, will teach students the programming language through a mix of online learning and self-paced asynchronous work.
“Participants will have the opportunity to earn the PCEP™ — Certified Entry-Level Python Programmer certification (Exam PCEP-30-0x) — and gain the skills necessary to launch a high-growth career in software engineering,” she said.
Fogleman added that the other IT Basics Short Course follows the same instruction model over the course of 12 weeks and will get participants A+ certified through completion of the CompTIA A+ Core 1 and Core 2 exams.
“A strong foundation in computer technology and professional skills will equip learners for a future career in IT support and administration,” she said.
According to Vickers, the IT Basics and Python Programming Short Courses can apply to students across the university’s many colleges, as well as anyone seeking professional certification in cyber fields.
“Someone could do both, but they are fully independent from one another, and they’re also offered outside of the traditional classroom and academic environment, and we did that to meet people’s needs,” he said. “So it could be for an existing student or recent graduate of either of our schools, but also could be someone in the community that’s looking to move on and into a new field — maybe move from one sector of their career path to another.”
Thanks to the effort of faculty and staff, Vickers said the university’s cybersecurity offerings have developed substantially over the past five to 10 years with the expressed goal of benefitting several major arms of the professional world.
“When we dug in and did the research, what we found was that in order to be really strong in cyber, there’s different areas — you can’t just be good at one thing,” he said. “We’ve got to build two or three areas around it. So we are strong in research and we’re strong in degrees, but what we saw was a gap in opportunity to strengthen what we call workforce development … [which] really means offering programs and connecting with employers to equip, up-skill and re-skill the workforce.”
These courses, according to Rafael Castanada, vice president of government partnerships at General Assembly, seek to quickly and effectively respond to what Fogleman framed as a “cybersecurity talent gap in Texas and across the country.”
“We’re facing a skills crisis in the U.S., and it’s critical that universities and colleges play a role in creating alternative pathways to obtain those skills,” Castanada said in the statement.
Vickers said since cyber-related skills are necessary for many students and professionals seeking competitive employment, the two courses aim to serve this need within Waco at large.
“We see cybersecurity as a critical field for American competitiveness and for our community’s resilience,” he said.
