City College of San Francisco
San Francisco, CA
MPICT coordinates, improves, and promotes information and communications technologies (ICT) education. It focuses on community colleges in northern California, northern Nevada, southern Oregon, Hawaii, and the Pacific Territories. Improving the ICT workforce positively impacts most organizations, all industries, and the U.S. economy.
MPICT Improves ICT Student Success
In the information and knowledge economies of the 21st century, people increasingly depend on information and communications technologies (ICT). The ICT term is used worldwide to encompass all rapidly emerging, evolving, and converging computer, software, networking, telecommunications, Internet, programming, and information systems technologies. ICT enables individual and organizational productivity in all industries.
Community colleges are the most cost-effective vehicle for pushing ICT knowledge and skills into American communities and workforces. MPICT directly serves 70 community colleges in 4 states and 3 territories through research, conferences, faculty development, community building activities, business and industry interactions, best practice dissemination, and resource sharing. MPICT efforts potentially affect thousands of students.
Developing a Skilled ICT Workforce
MPICT, as the representative of ICT programs at 70 community colleges, engages business and industry representatives more effectively than most individual programs can achieve on their own. MPICT does this by creating leveraged education and business interactions to improve ICT education, workforce development, and placement.
MPICT’s annual Winter ICT Educator Conference brings together more than 150 community college faculty members and industry representatives to share quality practices and resources. This event alone impacts 15,000 to 25,000 students annually. MPICT’s annual Summer Faculty Development Week helps 50 to 75 educators keep up with rapidly changing technologies, learn new course material, and practice effective pedagogies for teaching ICT. Educators also learn ways to use technology to improve student engagement and outcomes. These summer events affect the education of thousands of students annually. The improved student outcomes influenced by these events enhance the ICT workforce.
Through ongoing studies and publication of its assessments of ICT workforce needs, MPICT has positioned itself as a major participant in the important task of identifying trends and guiding the curriculum-improvement efforts of its community college members. For example, a recent MPICT study surveyed more than 600 employers to quantify ICT industry and employment issues in California. The study found that the ICT workforce represents 1 in 20 U.S. jobs. This analysis of industry trends and demands provides MPICT’s 70 community college partners with more valuable information than they could readily obtain through local advisory groups or from existing secondary data sources.
