Germanna Graduates First Amazon Web Services Pre-Apprenticeship Class
Pilot course trains students in skilled labor necessary to build and operate data centers.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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Earlier this month, 20 Fredericksburg-area students became the first in Virginia to graduate from a new training program that aims to prepare participants for jobs in data centers and other industries that require skilled-trade workers.
“This was our pilot cohort,” said Nick Lee-Romagnolo, principal program manager for economic and workforce development for Amazon Web Services (AWS), which offered the training program in conjunction with Germanna Community College. “We finished one a couple of weeks before this in central Ohio and we launched another pilot in Jackson, Mississippi. These are really the first three. The first of their kind at all.”
The four-week, 30-hours-per-week AWS Information Infrastructure Pre-Apprenticeship course provides students with hands-on instruction in four key areas—electrical, HVAC, mechanical, and data center operations.
“They’re essentially learning skills that are aligned to the infrastructure of our information society—and I mean the physical infrastructure that is being built all around us that most of us don’t know about,” Lee-Romagnolo said.
While these skills do support “mission-critical” facilities like data centers, they’re not unique to data centers, he continued.
“They are the kinds of skills you will see in other types of large construction,” he said.
AWS plans to invest $35 billion over the next 15 years to build data centers in Virginia—with multiple projects in the works in the Fredericksburg area—and requires skilled technicians to construct and operate the facilities.
Lee-Romagnolo said AWS’s goal is to collaborate with local community colleges like Germanna to create training courses that can serve the community by establishing a pipeline to these jobs, many of which pay well and don’t require a four-year college degree.
“It’s important to emphasize that these programs are for AWS and its contractors and the industry in general,” he said. “There is a shortage, a real delta between the supply and demand for skilled labor, especially the skilled tech workforce.”
Electricians and fiber optic installers are in particularly short supply, he said.
AWS selected students and paid them $21 per hour to complete the pilot course. Germanna provided an instructor-of-record for the four weeks and AWS brought in subject-matter experts to lead the technical training.
Students got bootcamp-style instruction in electrical systems, HVAC control systems, fiber optics, and data center operations. They also worked on interview skills and resume-writing and completed safety certification through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Lee-Romagnolo said the first cohort of students were extremely diverse in terms of age, gender, and race, and came from both rural and urban settings.
“They were so interesting and so interested in one another,” he said. “Each day a student would bring in lunch for the rest of the classmates.”
At their graduation, the students presented their Germanna instructor with a framed photo of the cohort.
“They gave speeches about each other and that faculty member,” Lee-Romagnolo said. “They were crying.”
AWS’s goal was for the course to inspire students to pursue more training in one of the disciplines, but it also apparently provided sufficient skills to be hired immediately upon graduation, Lee-Romagnolo said.
“We’ve heard people were hired on the spot,” he said. “Five of the 20 [from the Ohio cohort] already had jobs two weeks after graduation.”
Lee-Romagnolo said AWS plans to offer more courses next year through public-private partnerships.
One of the graduates, Barbara Powers, shared that after 39 years as a mom, completing the course was the “the first thing I’ve ever done for myself.”
Lee-Romagnolo said that shows how meaningful the course can be.
“I really think this is going to change people’s lives and help them earn family-sustaining income where they weren’t able to before,” he said. “They’ll be able to move from a job into a career. It’s that kind of life-changing event.”
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