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Columbus State Community College is keeping current with its Artificial Intelligence IT Certificate program.
Columbus State Community College is keeping current with its Artificial Intelligence IT Certificate program.
“Columbus State constantly is making efforts to have updated curriculum so that we’re current and meeting the workforce demands for Central Ohio,” said Britney Williams-Ward, a data analytics professor at the school.
She leads the new two-year data analytics degree program.
“We’ve been really working toward integrating data, not only in our department, but across departments at Columbus State,” she said.
“We have a number of folks who are now able to follow a two-year pathway in data analytics. … Isaiah (Abimbola, an information technology professor) and I both have been working with our workforce folks on curriculum that we received from Intel.”
The tech giant provided guidance for the program that teaches machine learning, natural language processing, AI for manufacturing and more.
Abimbola said the college has the right set of students to graduate in the field and do something impactful.
“We need to teach them to be critical thinkers, to make the right decisions,” he said. “Some jobs will be eliminated, but more jobs will be created to replace them. This is how we can prepare the students for future employment.”
Columbus State leaders are in the process of creating curriculum for an associate degree in AI as well, building on the success and interest in both the data analytics program and the non-credit AI certificate program.
AI is becoming more prevalent in several in-demand jobs, including healthcare.
“Data is everywhere,” Williams-Ward said. “It touches all types of jobs today.
“Knowing how to talk about data, how to use it and make sense of it, how to question with it and reason with it, is really an important skill regardless of the discipline that you actually might go into.”
Additionally, Columbus State officials say there are opportunities to match students with internships and jobs at workforce partners that are helping shape the curriculum.
“(With) AI and data analytics, a lot of it is going to be essential to moving forward,” Abimbola said. “We have to remember that we are not just competing (locally) right now. … You could be inside a rock somewhere on another planet writing code. So, we are basically competing with the rest of the world, and we must lead, and we have to work towards that.”
The certificate, non-credit program will next run Jan. 15-Sept. 3.
Registration is open, and the 30-week program’s total cost is $2,600.
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