March 27, 2024 Quarterly BayICT Meeting

Meeting Objectives: 

● Provide updates on Bay Area Community College Consortium ICT/DM-related projects ● Collect input to proposed BACCC project for regional employer engagement ● Partner Announcements and Updates 

Agenda: 

1. BACCC/BayICT Projects & Program Updates 
2. Artificial intelligence/Data Analytics (AIDA) 
3. Regional VIrtual Production Academy (RVPA) 
4. Bay Area Regional Cyber Clinics 
5. BayICT Tech Talks 
6. Partner Announcements and Updates 

III. Cross-Sector Regional Employer Engagement Project Proposal 

1. Action Review and Adjourn 

(Agenda change to begin with Partner Announcements and Updates) 

Attendees: 

Alex Kramer, Director of Workforce Development, College of San Mateo 

Amina Siddiqi, Sr. Manager at LNF and Itbiz 

Angel Fuentes, Dean, Business and Workforce Development, Evergreen Valley College Christopher Lewis, Berkeley City College, Dean of Mathematics, Science and Career Education Henry Lum, Student 

Lawrence Wagner, Founder of Governance Pros, and in the Master of Information and Cybersecurity at UC Berkeley 

Michael Katz, Regional Organizer, EASTBAYWorks

Monica Beane, Sr. Program Manager, AWS 

Olivia Herriford, BACCC 

Quinnallison Dovey, Program Analyst, Oakland Workforce Development Board Rakesh Ramakrishnan, Data Scientist, PayPal – AIDA Advisory BACCC Sarah Ferguson, BACCC 

Steven Booth, VP of PM for Detection and Response, Salesforce. Formerly chief security officer at FireEye/Mandiant 

Steven Nelson, Employment & Training Specialist, ICT Sector, City College of San Francisco Terri Oropeza, Cabrillo CIS Faculty 

Tuan Nguyen, Faculty, Laney College 

Victoria Rivett, AI program facilitator, Sustainable Living Lab (implementation partner to Intel 

Updates: 

AIDA Project 

Tuan Nguyen gave an update on the Ai Data Analytics (AIDA) project led by Laney College beginning with an overview of the program pathways which fall into 3 very distinctive tracks (which can be found here). The tracks lead to certificates and also an AS degree in Applied AI. 

The exciting news will come next month. Laney and the project have applied to the Academic Senate and Chancelor’s Office for an AI discipline as a standalone discipline. A vote will be taken in April. 

All of the AIDA developments ARWe offered to all the colleges at no cost. To support that commitment, AIDA is leading the formation of the California Community College AI Consortium. Thus far, there are 12 colleges expressing interest in joining, along with industry partner, AWS. 

Regional Virtual Production Academy Project 

The RVPA is a 8-college collaborative program, the most ambitious to date. There’s never been more than 2 colleges to successfully implement one. Two certificate programs have been developed with a third and an associate’s degree in progress. Program pathways can be found on the RVPA webpage. 

Outreach and awareness began this spring with monthly Zoom info sessions for students and faculty in preparation for the Fall 2024 launch. (See webpage for future info session dates and recordings of past sessions. 

Bay Region Cyber Clinic Grant

The clinic model has been adapted for the field of cybersecurity by the Center for Long Term Cybersecurity at the University of California. Cyber security clinics train students from diverse backgrounds to strengthen the digital defenses of places like nonprofits, small governments, hospitals, public infrastructure organizations, and other under-resourced organizations. Wifh support from the CLTC, Google is offering ten $1M grants to universities and community colleges to implement cyber clinics at their institutions. 

Six Bay Area colleges (Merritt, Ohlone, Santa Rosa Junior College, City College of San Francisco, Foothill, and Las Positas) collaborated to submit a grant application proposing a very unique model for a Cyber Clinic that serves the entire Bay Region. This is a great opportunity for our students to get the experience they can add to their resume to demonstrate that they’ve done this kind of work. We believe it is a very competitive application and will learn of the outcomes by the end of April. 

BayICT Tech Talks 

We thank our BayICT Partners present at the meeting who have given their time to be speakers: Terri Oropeza, Angel Fuentes, and Rakesh Ramakrishnan. All were on valuable topics for our students and faculty and we deeply appreciate it. Recordings of all Tech Talks and BayICT events are available on the website. 

Coming up on April 25th, the guest speaker is Juan Soberanes, a Cabrillo College cyber program grad whose topic is “Starting from Scratch, a Cyber Security Alum’s Career Journey” 

AWS Educator Enablement Program 

Monica Beane shared information and resources for its Educator Enablement Program (EEP), offered by AWS Machine Learning University, prepares faculty to teach data management (DM), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) concepts. AWS MLU prioritizes community colleges, HBCUs, and MSIs as a target talent pool for democratizing AI, particularly for ‘blue collar’ AI roles. The AIDA project was first in the Bay Region to leverage the EEP at Laney College. 

This summer, AWS MLU is offering a free 2-week Introduction to Machine Learning Bootcamp for College Educators. Go to this link for more information and registration. 

Cross Sector Regional Employer Engagement 

For input to a possible region-wide employer outreach project, the remaining meeting time was a discussion of needs and potential objectives and key outcomes.

• The AWS EEP program considers community college as their target audience. How do we get our local employers on the same page? How do they get practical experience? How do you get into a role without experience? 
• AWS Skills to Job Tech Alliance
• Need an outreach program to reach out to recruiters. There is a program out there. We have a great pool of talent. Getting help from alumni. 
• LinkedIn as a focus. Media presence on Linked In. 
• Where are we finding the contacts that we need to make? 
• Instructors help students find entry level jobs. Employer relationships need to be heavily maintained. One student at a time. They see the value of a direct referral. ● The importance of internships which lead to long term jobs. No internships, no jobs ● Long-term partnerships have been threatened due to outsourcing. ● Going out into the community and finding the small service providers who will either do a significant training program or formal internship program. 
• Working with Community Colleges can be very confusing. Academic speak vs HR speak. Cabrillo has an apprenticeship planning grant focusing attention on outreach to non-tech employers. 
• There are so many startups that need people with experience. Reaching out to investors of those orgs, might get a quicker response. Resource: Angel Investor Network – showcase new startups created within and without CA 
• Learning is 60% 
• Invite employers to judge Datathons. They get to see the learners problem-solve and observe their communication/presentation skills (soft skills are HUGE). AI crosses all industry…engage your local and state municipalities as partners, too.