From 2008 to 2016, the Mid-Pacific ICT Center (MPICT.org) was funded as a National Science Foundation (NSF) Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Regional Center of Excellence, based in San Francisco.  Its mission was to coordinate, improve and promote ICT education and workforce development in California, Nevada, Hawaii and the Pacific Territories.  Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is an umbrella term, widely used outside the U.S. and in the United Nations, to encompass all rapidly emerging, evolving and converging computer, software, networking, telecommunications, Internet, programming, information systems and digital media technologies.

Initially, there was no strategic sector defined in the MPICT region to address these many interdependent, inter-related, rapidly evolving and increasingly important technology, industry and employment segments, and the ICT term was not in widespread use in the region. 

MPICT worked with California Community College (CCC) Economic and Workforce Development Centers of Excellence to define the ICT industry sector as a cluster of identified North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes - and the ICT occupation sector as an identified cluster of Standard Occupational Classification codes.  In a dozen quality research reports, it quantified and qualified the size and importance of these sectors to the California economy, which was much larger and more important than had previously been recognized, and identified issues and opportunities for education and workforce development improvement. 

Community building and advocacy efforts led to increased awareness of ICT and its importance - and to adoption of ICT/Digital Media sector nomenclature and prioritization by:

• The California Community College system, the largest higher educational system in the U.S., with one in four community college students in the country and 2/3 of a million ICT related enrollments annually,
• The California Department of Education, which renamed and revised its relevant Career Technical Education sector and standards ICT,
• The California Workforce System, including the California Workforce Investment Board (CWIB), California Workforce Association (CWA) and all 49 local Workforce Investment Boards (WIBs),
• The California Employment Development Department (EDD), which manages government employment services in California.

Each of these is the largest organization of its kind in the U.S.

MPICT faculty professional development efforts were based on a recognition that ICT faculty professional development funding had dried up during the economic crisis, ICT technologies and practices emerge and evolve very rapidly, and ICT education quickly becomes irrelevant if faculty do not stay current.  MPICT professional development events addressed new technologies, certifications, industry academy programs and pedagogy, and they impacted at least 1,000 faculty, who teach more than 100,000 students annually.

MPICT co-created the National Cyber League (NCL) to create passion and motivation for cybersecurity workforce development, the largest paid intercollegiate capture the flag cybersecurity competition in the U.S., and experimented with 3 international student education experiences.

MPICT helped redefine the U.S. Department of Labor IT Competency Model and validated its content with California employers, collaborated with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Committee for Computing Education in Community Colleges (CCECC) to develop, refine, validate and release ACM’s curricular guidance for Information Technology associate degrees, which is aligned to the DOL model, and assisted CCCs in developing and adopting an IT model curriculum to address quantified lack of harmonization among ICT education programs and credentials.

MPICT media channels made millions of impressions on a widespread and diverse audience and popularized the ICT term.

MPICT collaborated to acquire $1 million to fund a Shared Regional ICT lab, initially used to provide 24x7 access from any Internet connected device to more than 450 quality assured hands-on labs for faculty and students at 25 of the 28 colleges in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, the largest collaborative effort of its kind in the nation.

With BATEC NSF ATE Center funding, MPICT research, community building, advocacy and hard work in a project to create, coordinate, improve and promote ICT pathways from K-12 to higher education to work in San Francisco contributed to a $6 million California Career Pathways Trust award to sustain the work and led to an announcement that San Francisco public schools would integrate traditional Computer Science into all K-12 grades.

MPICT research and advocacy have been leveraged to acquire tens of millions of dollars in Career Pathway Trust, workforce system, community based organization and community college grants to improve ICT education and workforce development, and they led to the California Community College system dedicating funding for 11 ICT sector navigators to work in every region of the State to improve CCC ICT education services and performance. 

MPICT efforts are being sustained, not by continued funding for MPICT itself, but by institutionalization of the issues and efforts of MPICT by the relevant permanent systems in the region.  In Hawaii, that included faculty professional development and $2 million DOL funded efforts to improve cybersecurity education.  In Nevada, that included a CC to university cybersecurity transfer pathway.

Last Modified: 08/30/2016
Modified by: Pierre Thiry