This Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) project is a Type III (A: C) partnership between Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU), an NSF PFI graduate (0227754), and two institutions new to the PFI Program (defined as ones that have never been PFI grantees): Alabama A&M University and Nashville State Community College (NSCC). The Bureau of Labor Statistics projected the total number of IT job openings in the U.S. to be 1.6 million between 2006 and 2016. Only half of that number will be filled due to decreased enrollment and low retention rates in IT related majors, and this shortfall situation is mirrored in Tennessee. Currently, the estimated demand for IT professionals in the Nashville area is as high as 1,200 per month. However, the universities in middle Tennessee are graduating a maximum of 380 graduates per year with an IT related baccalaureate degree. In order to address the need to increase the numbers of qualified IT professionals in the region, the project seeks to develop a national recruitment and retention model for IT workforce development by building an infrastructure to bring together all the stakeholders in the pipeline--academic (a PhD granting university, a community college, an HBCU in a nearby county in Alabama, and public high schools in both Tennessee and Alabama) and local business (through IT business associations) in the Tennessee and Alabama region. What is proposed to address both the recruitment and retention of IT students at the college level is a set of interrelated set of activities (including student summer camp topics such as Alice animation, robotics, and multimedia design) intended to motivate, challenge, and intrigue as well as to provide learning experiences which make the students? studies more relevant and their resumes more competitive.
The direct involvement of local IT business and academic institutions with high school students/teachers/parents will have a positive impact on the number of IT majors and IT graduates. The database of real-world problems and projects and resulting case studies will be widely distributed providing examples for other IT educators to use. The model created by Partners for Innovation in Information Technology (PIIT) will result in a greater number of better trained IT professionals helping address the national IT workforce crisis.
Partners at the inception of the project are Academic Institutions: Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) (lead institution) , Alabama A&M University, Nashville State Technical Community College (NSTCC), Rutherford County Schools (TN), Davidson County Schools (TN); and Madison County Schools (AL); Private Sector (Corporate) Organizations: Mind2Marketplace (AL and TN); and Governmental Organizations: Tennessee State Government.
