The Minnesota State IT Center of Excellence is part of an almost 12 year old initiative created by the Minnesota legislature to encourage engagement between students, teachers, IT professionals, and employers in our state to advance IT education. We are tasked with bringing the most wanted IT skills and the most up-to-date technologies to the forefront of what our schools teach and our students learn; with the ultimate goal of creating a workforce that can meet Minnesota’s growing need for IT professionals. The IT Center, known by some as MN ITCOE, does this in many ways including coordinating curriculum development, hosting student competitions and awards, and offering hands-on events to enable the career readiness and success of students.
The world of IT is an in demand and ever changing place; it consists of careers ranging from development to management and process to implementation. Luckily, there is a position for every unique personality and skill set, and each job plays an essential part in keeping the modern world’s technology structure intact and moving forward. This need creates an incredible amount of lucrative and rewarding opportunities for people like you. In fact, in 2015, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics named Minnesota the fastest growing state for IT careers, which means job security, hiring opportunities, and higher salaries with good benefit packages. A few examples of much needed Minnesota specific careers include cybersecurity, data, and software and app development. We work to stay on top of the future of IT, so you can be sure we are always working to develop new ways to teach, learn, and connect in the IT field at all times.
The IT Center helps k-12 students learn more about future career opportunities through fun offerings like the IT Discovery Network that allow younger Minnesotans the chance to “try out” future IT career opportunities and learn valuable skills like coding. One of our most renowned opportunities for high school girls is the Aspirations program, which continues to grow each year. For our Minnesota State two year, four year, and advanced degree students the IT Center offers numerous opportunities through degree offerings, paid internships, IT specific events like CCDC and Data Derby, scholarship offerings and resume building events; along with much more.
Employers and IT professionals can be connected with hard-to-find experienced and quality job seekers who can be onboarded to your organization even while still in college through intern to hire opportunities like the Fusion program at Metro State. We also offer the innovative IT Connect platform powered by Work Out Loud where jobs and internships can not only be posted, but actually seen by eligible Minnesota job seekers. There are also sponsorship opportunities available to keep your company name in front of customers and future eligible job seekers.
We help educators at all levels be able to prepare their students to be future leaders of the tech filled world. This is done through free workshops, conferences like New Directions, and course and curriculum development support that breaks down difficult information into learning modules in a way that makes it easy to understand and also to teach. Two current projects involve course design for Minnesota State faculty in the much in demand fields of data and cybersecurity.
