One of the major issues discussed during a two-day training program for community college teachers was the continuing effort to create a model curriculum for all IT programs within the 26-college Bay Region. To do this, the proposed curriculum must be developed, then be approved first by a lead college, then by the regional deans, and finally by the state.

The last curriculum remaining was a UNIX/Linux curriculum. Ohlone College in Fremont had committed the time and resources to doing this (and presented their results to the group) and the curriculum is now going in for state approval. This will provide a springboard for the next set of classes which depend on the model UNIX/Linux program -- classes that prepare students for careers supporting high performance computing (HPC) systems ranging from Linux clusters to supercomputers. Helping to develop this curriculum were Gary Jung and Greg Kurtzer of the ITSD UNIX Systems Group.

Kurtzer is also participating as an advisor to Contra Costa Community College in San Pablo on HPC courses. The college is one of four community colleges involved in a National Science Foundation Grant to develop classes in High Performance Computing and establish a program to distribute the results of this effort to other interested colleges.

“Programs like the one we had this month help develop relationships that allow community college faculty to communicate with each other and to work with industry partners in development of programs that are critical to building a trained workforce that meets the needs of the future,” said Charlie Verboom, head of desktop support at the Lab and coordinator of the training sessions.