Secretary of Labor Touts Maryland Community College Job-training Program

(Work in Progress), the US Department of Labor’s blog recently published a story on job-driven training in our country’s community colleges by US Secretary of Labor Tom Perez.  Perez writes about a federal grant program called TAACCCT and shares a story of a student he met at Anne Arundel Community College enrolled in a TAACCCT-supported program.  He writes,

Today, I joined Vice President Biden at the White House for the announcement of the fourth round of TAACCCT grants — 71 of them in all, worth a total of more than $450 million. That comes on top of the nearly $1.5 billion awarded in the first three rounds. With today’s announcement, roughly 700 colleges nationwide have received TAACCCT funding since 2011. . .

Joining us at the White House today was Gary Pollard, a former Army medic who is starting a $60,000-a-year job thanks to cyber technology instruction he received through TAACCCT-supported programs at Anne Arundel Community College (AACC) in Maryland. Last year when I visited the college, I met both Gary and Ginny Quillen, a woman who’s faced considerable challenges in her life. Ginny was abused as a child; she was involved with drugs and served time. But through hard work and resilience, she’s overcome the adversity. And with the Information Assurance and Security certificate she earned at AACC, today she makes $52,000 a year in a job she loves and a field she’s passionate about.

According to the blog’s data, Maryland has received $14,957,899 TAACCCT funding for its Cyber-Technology Pathways Across Maryland (CPAM) Consortium, a statewide effort, consisting of 14 of Maryland’s 16 Community Colleges. The program’s strategies include:

  1. Build a statewide Career Pathways System that is accessible and easy to navigate,
  2. Develop a statewide system of requirements, processes and services for the target population and help participants build skills in the industry and future career path in cyber-security,
  3. Build a connected statewide information and communication system to assist participants in making informed choices and provide data driven analysis to continuous improvement and longer-term planning,
  4. Employ technology to strengthen quality programming across the state, and
  5. Build strategic partnerships that engage employers, leverage resources, expertise and networks to meet participants’ needs for support and respond to employers’ changing skill needs over time.

For more information, see the full blog post from (Work in Progress).