Students at Texas State Technical College will soon have the opportunity to expand their knowledge of artificial intelligence with a new online certification.
What’s happening?
According to a March 31 news release, the college is slated to launch a new online artificial intelligence implementation specialist certificate program within its web design and development program, with potential topics including:
- AI data systems
- Cloud infrastructure
- Programming language
- Vision computing
The program comes after the college was awarded a $198,000 grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s Texas Reskilling and Upskilling Through Education 2025-27 grant program in consultation with Education Strategy Group, per the release.
“AI advances at a significantly faster pace than traditional information technology,” said Emanuel Palacios, TSTC’s dean of digital transformation. “The intent of the [program] design is to not create the curriculum and skill sets based-on short term trending-type changes in AI, but more a skill set needed to integrate AI into platforms and digital tools.”
Why it matters
The grant was also used to perform a job marker analysis, which identified Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston as AI-job “heat locations” with Abilene also on the radar due to data center construction, per the release.
Next steps
The program is expected to debut as soon as fall 2027 with course updates from a third-party content provider as the field advances, per the release.
