Collin College recently received a $3.7 million grant from the National Science Foundation to support the national project Information Technology Skill Standards, 2020 and Beyond.

Collin College will lead the project and is partnering with educational team members from across the country. The four-year grant will address the need for more IT workers and provide up-to-date skills standards.

The project will facilitate curriculum development for two-year and four-year programs that offer applied information technology degrees. The skills standards will focus on the knowledge, skills and abilities, tasks and performance criteria that employers expect from workforce job candidates.

“The pipeline funneling workers into information technology jobs is far too narrow, and we simply do not have enough employees to meet the growing demands of this field,” said Ann Beheler, Collin College executive director of Emerging Technology Grants, in a press release. “It is an honor to be selected to lead this NSF grant, which will enable us to focus on the technical content and employability skills that industry needs and serve as a liaison disseminating that information nationally to two-year and four-year educational institutions.”

According to the release, the project will involve at least 400 subject matter industry experts from different businesses and more than 200 educators selected nationally.

The project will also offer several workshops across the U.S. and assist with the application of the new IT curriculum standards within historically black colleges, Hispanic-serving institutions, tribal colleges and colleges committed to active veteran programs such as Collin College.