DCO Program Development Fellowship

This summer, post-secondary faculty and staff from NOVA, fellow VCCS colleges, and community colleges from across the country completed a fellowship in data center operations, funded by an NSF ATE grant. The first cohort of the DCO Program Development Fellowship kicked off their fellowship with a 3-day professional learning (PL) series at NOVA in June. During their time at NOVA, they learned about NOVA’s DCO program, toured the STACK data center in Ashburn, and explored topics in the Introduction to Data Centers class taught by adjunct faculty member and STACK employee, TJ Ciccone.

The fellows then returned to their home institution to complete a five-day externship at a local data center where they could see first-hand the concepts explored during their PL. Upon completion of the externship, fellows submitted a Plan of Action on how they plan to implement what they learned into their professional practice. SySTEMic will follow-up with them this fall to provide support in helping them to implement their proposed plans. Fellows received a $3500 stipend for completion of the program. Community College faculty and staff who would like to participate in the Summer 2025 program are invited to apply online at http://teacherpd.novastem.us/fellowship.

This first cohort of fellows hailed from NOVA, Laurel Ridge Community College, Germanna Community College, Houston Community College, Texas State Technical College, Estrella Mountain Community College (AZ), and Prince William County Schools. SySTEMic wishes to thank the following data center partners for hosting fellows this summer: Coresite (Reston), Equinix (Ashburn), Iron Mountain (Manassas), Equinix (Ashburn), Middletown Data Center (Middletown, VA), STACK (Dallas, TX), and Stream Data Centers (Houston, San Antonio, Phoenix).