Nine Honored At Moraine Park IT Careers Completion Ceremony

Yeakpan Kopah of Fond du Lac is congratulated by Moraine Park Technical College’s president, Bonnie Baerwald, at the College’s IT Careers Completion Ceremony on Sept. 15. Also pictured are (left to right) Anne Lemke, grant manager; Dominic Garofalo, IT instructor; and Jeff Stueber, business management instructor.

Moraine Park Technical College held an IT Careers Completion Ceremony on September 15. Nine students received Content Management Systems certificates, and one student, Andrew Bond of Fond du Lac, also earned iOS Web Application Developer and Android Web Application Development certificates through the U.S. Department of Labor Interface grant program.

The cohort students consisted of Bond, Tyler Kern of Fond du Lac, Yeakpan Kopah of Fond du Lac, Lori Roberg of Jackson, Christopher Rowe of West Bend, Eric Schepp of Fond du Lac, Clayton Schultz of Lomira, Samuel Smith of Ripon and Mary Zoromski of Neenah. These students designed and built brand new websites for small business partners Urban Fuel, Downtown Deli and Fond du Lac Decorating. 

The students then presented the soon-to-be published websites, and business partners were in attendance to show support. College representatives offering words of encouragement were Dr. Fred Rice, dean of applied technology and trades; Lisa Pollard, associate dean of business & IT; Jeff Stueber, business management instructor; Dominic Garofalo, IT instructor; Bonnie Baerwald, Moraine Park president; and Anne Lemke, grant manager.

                The IT Careers program was implemented as part of a three-year, $995,662, TAACCCT 3 grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Labor to address emerging needs in the IT sector.

This grant, which awarded a total of $23.1 million to 16 colleges in the Wisconsin Technical College System, is backing the statewide INTERFACE project, which has been established to help develop, improve and expand adult educational training pathways to careers in information technology-related occupations in business, information technology, healthcare, logistics, automation and manufacturing. 

In collaboration with workforce development boards, job centers, advisory boards and local employers, the grant has allowed Moraine Park the resources to develop a new IT Careers program that provides specific training to adult learners, veterans and dislocated workers. Four short-term, targeted certificates are offered within this program, including Content Management, Android Web Application Development, iOS Web Application Development and Website Security.

Students that complete these short-term certificates will have an opportunity to use those courses to ladder into an associate degree in IT-Web Development and Design Specialist or IT-Mobile Applications Designer/Developer, both created through the grant.              

                To learn more about information technology career certificates, please visit morainepark.edu/itcareers.