WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 22, 2018
HERMISTONHERALD.COM • A3
LOCAL
Data center tech program attracting more students
upstreaming so there’s no
down time, so customers
aren’t losing access to their
stuff, or credit card informa-
tion to hackers.”
By JAYATI RAMAKRISHNAN
STAFF WRITER
When students complete
Blue Mountain Community
College’s nine-month data
center technician program,
many won’t have to leave
their hometown to find a job.
“I’d love to stay local,”
said Noah Davis, a Hermis-
ton resident currently study-
ing in the program. “They’re
expanding so much, there’s
not a reason to leave.”
“They,” as many students
and professors are hesitant
to say, are Amazon Web Ser-
vices, which has several data
centers at the ports of Mor-
row and Umatilla, and is
constructing more in both
counties.
As Amazon expands, so
does the number of people
wanting to get into the data
center tech program.
For the 2018-19 school
year, instructor Pete Hern-
berg said 54 people applied
for the 20 available spots.
“The first year I was
deathly afraid we wouldn’t
have any students at all,” he
said adding that they had to
look for applicants. “Since
then, we’ve had more inter-
ested than we’re able to
accommodate.”
Ready to work
The program is tailored
toward students who want
to go directly into the work-
force. Unlike many college
programs, where students
are required to take human-
ities courses or other core
classes, the three-term pro-
gram focuses squarely on IT
— or information technol-
ogy — and equips students
to quickly get a technician
job.
Hernberg said a com-
pany approached him about
developing the program four
Student
backgrounds
STAFF PHOTO BY E.J. HARRIS
Joan Cardenas, left, and Christian Weyland, right, work on setting up a wired computer network with their lab partner Mandy
Tobin, back, on Wednesday at BMCC Early Learning Center in Boardman.
years ago.
“Prior to my working
here, in Prineville I was
involved in a somewhat sim-
ilar program at Central Ore-
gon Community College,”
he said.
While that program was
unsuccessful, Hernberg said
it left him with some ideas.
In November 2014, Her-
nberg said BMCC was
approached by a local
employer, whom he said
he couldn’t name due to a
non-disclosure agreement
with the company.
“They indicated to the
college that they were
expecting a lot of growth
in the coming years, and
they needed to have a large
number of qualified techni-
cians in the next three to five
years,” he said. “I worked
with them to develop a cur-
riculum, specifically tar-
geted to prepare students for
employment.”
The majority of students,
he said, come from east
Morrow and west Umatilla
counties.
“Most of our grads are
employed at data centers,
and most are employed
locally,” he said. Though
he said he didn’t have exact
numbers for how many stu-
dents go on to get jobs at
local data centers, he said 42
or 43 students of the 60 that
have completed the program
so far have gotten data cen-
ter jobs — both locally and
elsewhere. He said many
students’ first jobs out of the
program can include intern-
ships or temporary con-
tracts, not necessarily full-
time jobs.
Amazon financial
support
On Aug. 15, BMCC
announced that Amazon
Web Services was putting
$50,000 toward scholar-
ships for students currently
in the data center technician
program. Thirteen students
applied for and will receive
scholarships.
Hernberg said he was
pleased with the funds.
“I know some specific
situations where it’s really
made the difference between
students being able to go to
school or not go to school,”
he said.
Last Wednesday after-
noon in the data center tech-
nician lab, students tried to
figure out a problem: how
Fire brings dangerous air into Umatilla County
By KATHY ANEY
STAFF WRITER
Umatilla County’s air
quality deteriorated Sun-
day evening as smoke from
multiple fires drifted into the
area.
On Monday, smoke still
shrouded Umatilla County
like an unwanted houseguest
that wouldn’t leave.
The Hermiston Family
Aquatic Center was closed
all day to prevent families
and staff from spending time
in the smoke.
The Oregon Department
of Environmental Qual-
ity measures the tiny par-
ticles and gases in smoke
that can irritate lungs, eyes
and heart. The toxic mix-
ture includes carbon mon-
oxide, organic carbon and
an array of 5,000-to-10,000
different gases. By midnight
on Sunday, DEQ readings
for Pendleton topped out at
404 micrograms per cubic
meter, which is considered
hazardous, while in Hermis-
ton the air was merely “very
unhealthy.” The measure-
ment refers to fine particu-
late matter with a diameter
of less than 2.5 micrometers,
which is 3 percent the diam-
eter of a human hair. The
tiny particles can be inhaled
deep into the lungs of those
who breathe them.
As fires dot the state,
smoke would have rolled
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into the area no matter
which way the wind blew.
Most flowed from British
Columbia, where around
600 fires burned. A NASA
satellite captured images
of the smoke from space. A
National Weather Service
simulation shows smoke
flowing southwest into the
Pacific Northwest from Brit-
ish Columbia and northeast
from California and Oregon
in two swirling masses of
hazardous air.
Other fires, including one
in Gilliam County, added to
smogginess around the state.
do they make two comput-
ers talk to each other? They
worked on a simple static
routing exercise, setting up
two subnetworks and one
router that connects them.
One group of students ran
into a problem when they
found out one of the switches
wasn’t communicating with
one of the computers. Her-
nberg encouraged them to
troubleshoot by connecting
different cables to different
ports, and trying to isolate
where the problem was.
Solving those types of
problem is one of the road-
blocks students will have to
deal with in a job as a data
center technician.
“It’s dealing with cus-
tomer data, repairing servers
and switches,” Davis said.
“Making sure everything is
Students in the pro-
gram have a variety of
backgrounds.
“I’ve always been inter-
ested in computers,” said
Jonathan Macias, a Herm-
iston resident. “When I got
older, I started building
them.”
When he heard Amazon
was opening data centers, he
thought it was a good fit for
him, and an opportunity to
do IT work.
“Even if you don’t want
to start working with the
company, what you learn
here can be applied to any
company,” he said.
But most of the people in
the program are interested in
staying nearby.
“With Amazon build-
ing, and all the opportuni-
ties here, there’s no reason
to move that far away,” said
Shayla Preston.
Preston works 30 hours
a week as a medical assis-
tant at Good Shepherd Med-
ical Center and had no back-
ground in computers when
she started the program.
She said she was drawn to
the profession because of
the pay and the independent
nature of the work.
Mandy Tobin, a Board-
man resident, said the pro-
gram has been a good ser-
vice for the region.
“I feel it’s really helped
the community learn more
advanced skills,” she said.
“The program is very
hands-on, and caters to
(people) whether they’re
advanced in IT or have no IT
background whatsoever.”
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