With visiting dignitaries present, including members of the Lufkin/Angelina County Chamber of Commerce, Angelina College on Thursday held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to launch its new Network Administration Program scheduled to start with the upcoming new semester.
“This ceremony is a way to support our Chamber investors and the new ideas they’re bringing into our community,” Amanda Crocker, Director of Marketing and Communications for the Chamber, said. “We’re celebrating the opportunities those ideas are creating throughout East Texas.”
The new program came to fruition as part of AC’s recent Title V grant from the Department of Education. AC president Dr. Michael Simon lauded “community relationships” for helping the college and community collaborate to ensure incoming students are gaining the knowledge and training necessary for current workforce needs.
“We’ve said forever, our mission is to help people in our service area reach their full potential,” Simon said. “What our Board of Trustees added was ‘people and communities’ because we really live that here at AC. I’m so glad to see this program come to life through the input of employers, and I’m grateful for the support of faculty and staff around the college.”
Mary Larsen, who designed the entire curriculum and will serve as the Network Administration Program’s instructor and developer, said the program will offer various avenues for students to pursue, including a two-year Associate of Applied Sciences degree and certifications Larsen said “are recognized worldwide.”
“We’ll teach cybersecurity, cloud-based servers, and programming for servers,” Larsen said. “Now that a lot of our server equipment is being used everywhere. Everything we do now is server-based, and it increases our students’ chances of getting a good job and entering the field.
“It also gives students who choose to continue furthering their knowledge in a particular area, such as security, the background to do that as well.”
Larsen said even students with rudimentary knowledge of computers can succeed in the course.
“Of course, students will need to know how to navigate a computer – how to log in, how to use some of the applications – while having some familiarity with the internet. Mostly, a student just needs a strong desire to work in the network server community.”
The introductory portion of the course begins on Monday, August 28. Larsen said for now, there are two entry-level courses set in an eight-week hybrid (part face-to-face, part online classes) format. Later, Larsen said, there’ll be labs enabling students to work in a “virtual environment.”
All of which may lead to a very rewarding career, according to Larsen.
“We’re seeing employees with this type of training earn starting salaries of nearly $70,000 per year,” Larsen said. “These types of skills we’ll be teaching are definitely in demand in today’s high-tech world.”
For further information, contact Krista Brown at kbrown@angelina.edu.
