Connecticut puts AI training into job-specific college programs

Connecticut is steering its AI workforce push toward existing occupations, putting AI into accounting, cybersecurity and healthcare courses and tying those classes to employers before students graduate, according to CT Mirror.

Gov. Ned Lamont and workforce officials highlighted the effort at Goodwin University in East Hartford on Oct. 28. Tech Talent Accelerator 3.0, announced in February, adds a stronger AI focus to a four-year-old program supporting partnerships between higher education institutions and employers. Chief workforce officer Kelli-Marie Vallieres said the goal is to connect students and companies well before graduation.

The Office of Workforce Strategy is supporting an AI accounting and entrepreneurship course at Connecticut College, an AI for Cybersecurity program at the University of New Haven, and an online course in AI and healthcare business innovation at Quinnipiac University.

One employer relationship described at the event showed how those connections can lead to hiring. Nicholas Schilling, now a software engineer at IT and business consulting firm CGI, met the company while attending the University of St. Joseph. He subsequently completed a CGI internship and joined full-time after graduation. He now mentors students.

For people outside college programs, the Connecticut AI Academy offers free online certificates in AI literacy and fluency. The state also plans to pilot training on working with AI through a partnership with RAISE US, a nonpartisan organization offering retraining and skills development to workers displaced by the technology.

In August, the state Department of Economic and Community Development announced a $20 million investment in an applied AI workforce center in Hartford to train workers in new AI skills and technologies.