(Photo from Compass Datacenters website)
- The program will be Mississippi’s first such training program. It is being modeled after a similar program Compass successfully launched in Texas.
A new 14-week training program is being established at Meridian Community College to help staff a data center being built by Compass in the Central Mississippi region.
It is estimated that the U.S. will need an additional 6 million skilled workers by 2030, with about 500,000 such roles currently going unfilled each year.
In response, Compass is partnering with the Mississippi Community College to train people to fill those jobs.
On Friday, the community college and Compass, the company building a $10 billion, eight data center campus in the Meridian area, will officially launch a Mechanical, Electrical and Information Technology Data Center Pathway Program.
The program will be Mississippi’s first such training program. It is being modeled after a similar program Compass successfully launched in Texas and will provide students with hands-on training in careers that support the data centers being built in Mississippi.
Full scholarships for the first cohort in the training program are being provided by Compass.
The training program is expected to help graduates find jobs in the mechanical field for cooling, enterprise-grade electrical, and information technology roles that keep data centers operational. These jobs are expected to pay 30% to 50% more than the median wage and could result in careers paying six figures.
In addition, a career fair will be held at Meridian Community College’s Riley Workforce Development Center from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Friday, July 31 as well as on August 1 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Jeremy Pittari
