Infrastructure Masons continues expansion of leadership.

iMasons is where digital infrastructure professionals connect, grow and give back.  To accelerate the grow and give back elements, iMasons has appointed a new volunteer chair of the iMasons Education Committee. Stephen McNally of Oak Ridge National Lab, National Center for Computational Sciences, will succeed the previous committee chair, Winston Saunders, who recently stepped down to focus on a new job.

“In March of 2017 the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that there would be 1 million more computer-related jobs than applicants by 2020.  This looming talent shortage is often cited by iMasons members as one of their greatest concerns, sparking iMason’s initiative to accelerate the flow of talent into our industry” said Saunders.  “It has been my great pleasure to launch iMason’s Education Committee to recognize and support training and education programs in digital infrastructure at leading colleges and universities in the U.S. and U.K., including the program that Stephen McNally championed at University of Tennessee.  I’m delighted that we were able to convince Stephen to lead these efforts for iMasons moving forward.”

Student Tours of Data Centers

In 2017 iMasons began organizing tours of data centers for students interested in digital infrastructure careers, with a mandate to maintain gender equity on the tours.  The first tour in Sept. 2017 was of a Facebook facility in Ft. Worth, TX, for students from Southern Methodist University.  iMason’s next tour will be in February of a Digital Realty data center for students interested in the Data Center Operations Technology Program at Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA), and several more are being planned internationally for 2018.

iMasons Scholarship Program for Digital Infrastructure Programs

“One of iMason’s focuses in 2018 will be to formalize our scholarship program to help prepare students for the many high-paying careers to be found in the digital infrastructure industry.” said Jeff Omelchuck, Executive Director of iMasons. “Stephen’s leadership to help us identify worthy digital infrastructure programs worldwide will be key to strengthening the college-to-work pipeline.”

McNally continued “We’ve had such a great experience with our Data Center Technology and Management Minor degree program at the University of Tennessee.  It has been really effective at engaging students in the multi-disciplinary approach needed to build and operate modern data centers.  It opens their eyes to the diverse careers in this fast-growing field, in engineering, business, real estate development, logistics, sales, you name it.  There aren’t many university programs with an explicit focus on digital infrastructure, and we plan to change that by nurturing and supporting the existing ones and providing resources to create more.”