WASHINGTON — Northern Virginia Community College will this fall become one of the first community colleges in the country to offer a cloud computing degree.
The college has partnered with Amazon Web Services’ AWS Educate program to offer a cloud computing specialization as part of its associate of applied science degree in information systems technology.
Teresa Carlson, the vice president of worldwide public sector business for Amazon Web Services, made the announcement at an AWS Public Sector Summit in D.C. Wednesday.
According to LinkedIn, the No. 1 in-demand global skill for the past three years in a row has been cloud and distributed computing.
The two-year ITS cloud computing degree program is a 63-credit associate degree mapped to the skills and competency-based credentials required by AWS and other employers using cloud-based-services. All students will also receive free membership in the AWS Educate program and access to hands-on experience with leading cloud technology and tools.
“With this program, we seek to build a strong pipeline of talent to contribute to innovation across sectors in the growing and dynamic field of cloud computing,” Carlson said. “Cloud computing is creating a massive job opportunity, and NOVA is playing a leading role in moving community colleges to the forefront of this revolution.”
Cloud computing courses will initially be offered at NOVA’s Alexandria, Loudoun and Woodbridge campuses, with general education, personal development and foundational IT courses available at all of NOVA’s five comprehensive campuses and online.
It will share its Cloud computing curriculum with other educational institutions around the world, helping to promote the global needs of educators and students.
