PEORIA (25News Now) – Come August, Illinois Central College (ICC) will be back in session, but now it is offering new programs.
Those new programs include construction management, cybersecurity analyst, and artificial intelligence. Teaching Chair of Computer Programming Shari Tripp said jobs like those are in high demand in Peoria.
“We reach out to employers in the area and talk to them about what their needs are,” Tripp said. “Then we had our advisory committee meetings, employers told us this is what they wanted.”
A recent Pew Research survey found that more than half of the U.S.’s uses artificial intelligence on a daily basis. In 2022, 19% of U.S. workers were in jobs that are mostly exposed to this new intelligence.
Professor Rafeeq Al Hashemi said this is the future.
“It’s in different domains like education, health care,” Hashemi said.
ICC is pushing innovative technologies to give students more realistic opportunities in the classroom.
“We can use what we call native equipment that they are going to use in the field,” said Greg Love, the simulation and skills lab coordinator at ICC. “They have to connect it to the patient, they have to look at the monitor.”
Recently, ICC announced some of their classes will be a part of their new two eight-week terms for students. The cybersecurity and AI program will be a part of that.
“We’re actually redesigning all the classes so that they contain appurtenant material, but provide it in a quicker fashion,” Tripp said.
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