Belhaven University will be the first Mississippi institution of higher learning to provide students with an opportunity to obtain employment at the Amazon Web Services (AWS) facilities coming to Madison County.
The private school in Jackson announced its participation in AWS Academy, a program built in April by experts at AWS that will provide the university with a cloud computing curriculum.
This move comes after the online retail giant announced a multi-billion dollar plan to bring two hyper-scale data centers to central Mississippi — one at the Madison County Mega Center and the other on the Costas Property west of Tougaloo College and near County Line Road in Ridgeland. The plan marks the largest-ever economic development project in state history and is expected to generate numerous data science-related job opportunities in the area.
“Amazon wants qualified people. They need qualified people who can work with those servers and the data on them to either be data analysts or data storage specialists. They can be different kinds of application engineers,” Belhaven’s Dean of the School of Business and Program Director for Data Science Dr. Brett Andrews said on Good Things with Rebecca Turner. “They have 10 or so different certification pathways that you can get into with AWS.”
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The two data centers will create a combined 1,000 jobs with 800 of the positions being permanent jobs that include an annual salary of $70,000. Belhaven, in its participation with AWS Academy, seeks to equip students with the necessary skills to fill opening jobs at the data centers.
Beginning in the fall 2024 semester, students will have the chance to enroll in courses focused on cloud computing. These courses are tailored to teach the skills demanded by the industry, enabling students to tackle real-world business challenges and prepare them for AWS certification exams.
AWS Academy provides higher education institutions with a free, ready-to-teach cloud computing curriculum that fits into existing course structures and includes lectures, hands-on labs, knowledge checks, and projects for in-depth learning experiences.
Belhaven professors will receive complimentary professional development and mentorship to enhance their own research capacity and industry knowledge. Students will acquire the AWS Cloud skills necessary to pursue industry-recognized AWS certification and be ready to put these practical cloud skills to work in entry-level roles.
Andrews added that the program is online only, self-paced, and available for all students. Additional background in technology is not required to take these classes in the fall.
“Anybody can just jump in. You don’t need a specialized background. Belhaven is an equipping institution, so we bring education to people who need it on a mass scale. That’s what we do well,” Andrews said. “The AWS certification paths really help us present that valuable information, that curriculum that Amazon, themselves, wrote to people hear that want to become certified in those particular areas. We start everybody off at their base level, then let that student choose which direction they want to go after that.”
Watch the full interview with Dr. Brett Andrews below.
