Texas State named part of ‘TechHire’ community by White House

Posted by Jayme Blaschke
University News Service
March 11, 2016

Texas State University, in partnership with the Greater San Marcos Partnership, Austin Community College, Capital and Rural Capital Workforce Solutions, and the City of Austin has been named to the White House’s TechHire Initiative, designed to train and develop a home-grown information technology workforce.

“Texas State is committed to closing the tech workforce gap" said Gene Bourgeois, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Texas State. “We are developing new, accelerated pathways to well-paying jobs in technology fields.”

Currently, there are approximately 8,000 local jobs in information technology in Central Texas.

“What TechHire is going to do is to help local leaders connect the job openings to the training programs to the jobs,” said President Barack Obama during at the National League of Cities TechHire Launch in 2015. “It turns out, it doesn’t matter where you learned code. It just matters how good you are in writing code. If you can do the job, you should get the job.”

Texas State’s Accelerated Programmer Training is designed to give unemployed and underemployed adults rapid training in computer information technology. The program features competency-based learning. The accelerated pathway leverages experience, skills and knowledge to speed time to degree or certificate completion.

For more information about the TechHire Initiative, visit whitehouse.gov/techhire.

To learn more about Texas State’s IT programs, contact Todd Sherron, prior learning assessment coordinator, at ts10@txstate.edu or (512) 921-1630.