Holyoke Community College Honored for ‘Igniting Workforce Success’

HOLYOKE — Holyoke Community College (HCC) recently received the Igniting Workforce Success award from the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission (MRC) for a cybersecurity training program it runs in partnership with the agency, which recently changed its name to MassAbility.

Specifically, the award recognizes HCC for its CyberOps training program, a free, nine-month remote program that trains MassAbility consumers to be cybersecurity analysts. MassAbility works with people with disabilities to empower their lives through counseling and various career and employment programs.

Kermit Dunkelberg, vice president of Adult Basic Education and Workforce Development, accepted the award on behalf of HCC at the MRC’s Igniting Workforce Success conference in June.

“We just completed our fourth year with MassRehab,” Dunkelberg said. “This award is a great recognition of that partnership. In MassRehab, which is now MassAbility, we have a great partner. They bring as much to the table as we do in terms of innovation and attentiveness to student success.”

The pilot program launched by HCC and MassRehab in 2020 was the first of its kind in Massachusetts. Based on the program’s success, MRC launched a second with Roxbury Community College, which also received an Igniting Workforce Success award.

“Together, we are re-envisioning employment and people’s lives,” MassAbility Commissioner Toni Wolf said in 2020 after the first cohort of students graduated from the HCC program. “In the wake of COVID-19, our perspective on what is possible for remote work is expanding on a daily basis, particularly how resilient and adaptive people with disabilities are. These Cisco certifications are nationally recognized and highly sought-after workplace credentials that will give these students the needed leverage to enter a high-paying industry.”

Since 2020, about 60 MassRehab clients have gone through the program, many emerging with paid internships that have led to full-time, benefited positions as cybersecurity analysts.

“It was MassRehab’s vision to offer training in the area of cybersecurity,” Dunkelberg said. “This is by far the longest-duration program that they run, and the most expensive, because it is not only a long duration, but very intensive. These students are studying 30 hours a week for about 10 months, so it ends up being 900 hours of training, but the difference that it can make in someone’s life is huge in terms of economic self-sufficiency.”

Once students complete the training, they take exams to qualify as Cisco certified support technicians and Cisco certified networking associates. Past program graduates have gone on to work as cybersecurity consultants and systems analysts for big tech companies, such as Dell Technologies.

“The story we always like to tell is one about a participant from our first program class who was making pizza at Big Y,” Dunkelberg said. “Upon conclusion of the program, he was making $80,000 a year as a consultant.”

Other students have more modest but no less meaningful career outcomes, he added. “We’ve had four or five students intern here at HCC in our IT department. For a lot of people, just getting that hands-on experience is the next step. Another one of our students got a job working in IT support at her local library, and that was just what she needed. Her family told us that, before she went through our program, she hardly had a life outside her home. Having a job she could walk to was the perfect outcome for her.”

In 2023, program instructor Dalip Singh received the Above and Beyond Award from Cisco Networking Academy for developing and teaching the cybersecurity class.

Overall, Dunkelberg said, the program has been so successful that the agency wants to explore new training partnerships with HCC.