Virginia Tech and Roanoke College are announcing a partnership that gives Roanoke College students access to graduate level computer science courses.
The new partnership will allow Roanoke College students to take courses at Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus in Northern Virginia after they graduate.
Students won’t have to apply separately to Virginia Tech to go directly into this masters’ program, which focuses on computer science and computer engineering.
“It’s a degree that allows people in other disciplines that are seeing all of the excitement and growth in computer science, to be able to transition into computer science,” said
Lance Collins, is executive director of the Virginia Tech Innovation campus.
Students will be able to enroll in the program immediately. Those attending class this year will be at Virginia Tech’s location in Falls Church. The Innovation Campus is scheduled to open its permanent location in Alexandria next fall, and all classes will move there.
This partnership between Virginia Tech and Roanoke College is part of a larger effort to train more students across Virginia in computer engineering and computer science.
The state launched the initiative, called Virginia’s Tech Talent Investment Program, a few years ago, to grow the tech sector in Northern Virginia and attract tech companies, like Amazon.
And even though Amazon recently announced it’s pausing construction on its headquarters location in northern Virginia, Collins said the tech sector in the area is in need of more workers now and in the future.
