Students at Wake Technical Community College can now study close to the jobs of the future in Research Triangle Park.
Wake Tech celebrated the opening of a sixth campus Tuesday, with a focus on the high-tech programs demanded by a changing economy. Wake Tech’s RTP campus — a 110,000-square-foot instructional building built to accommodate 1,000 students — will offer degrees in business analytics, cybersecurity, IT storage and virtualization, supply chain management and business administration.
The new campus has an open-source classroom with Red Hat, a networking classroom with Cisco and other partnerships with Lenovo. Each company has provided equipment, curriculum and internships.
Tom Looney, chairman of the Wake Tech Board of Trustees, said tech companies have “enthusiastically embraced” the idea of an RTP campus.
“The idea is simple: Ask your customers — tech companies – what they need and provide students who can pull it off,” he said.
Will that tech-trained workforce be enough to draw one of two big companies in the market for new headquarters locations?
Looney said, “I can’t comment specifically on Apple or Amazon, but I will tell you, companies want workforce. We participate in every major discussion with anyone who is thinking of relocating here.”
Gov. Roy Cooper says the joint effort between business and higher education is a big part of the pitch when luring new tech companies to the Triangle.
“Across the country and across the world, recruiting companies to come to North Carolina or recruiting companies that are already here to expand, the No. 1 issue is ‘Do you have the people that can perform our job?'” Cooper said.
“That is what this new facility is about.”
Wake Tech’s RTP campus will also make degree and professional credential programs more accessible to mid-career professionals and to students of all ages who live in the western part of the county.
