HCC, Cisco
team up

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

A major provider of the equipment and systems that make international computer network systems work is ready to help Hawaii high school teachers provide their students with the expertise they will need to find jobs in a high-technology future.

Cisco Systems Inc., based in San Jose, Calif., was to sign an agreement today with the Honolulu Community College to make HCC a Cisco "regional academy." The idea is to provide equipment and experience at one place where high school faculty can come to learn what to pass on to their students.

That message, said David Alexander, an experienced educator who is manager of education market development for Cisco, is that there is a huge shortage of information-technology workers but to fill those jobs some particular knowledge is needed.

Alexander, who is taking part in a two-day "School-to-Work Opportunities" conference that starts today at the Sheraton Waikiki Hotel, said Cisco's aim is an eventual worldwide certification program. High school, community college and college graduates who go through the right learning process could be accepted anywhere.

In the relationship with HCC, Cisco will bring training programs it has honed elsewhere, provide equipment, provide low-cost ways to buy other equipment and teach teachers what to teach.

"First of all, it's the training of trainers who are going to train teachers," Alexander said.

It's all connected to the Hawaii School-to-Work program, which came from a congressional decision promoted by President Clinton to develop ways in which students from high school up could learn the technology they will need. After the 1994 law was passed Hawaii successfully bid for $10 million-plus in finding to carry the program through 1999.