The Information Technology Systems Management (ITSM) Program at TCAT McKenzie recently received a generous donation from Netgear Inc., and Sherrill Belew, owner of Area Wide Communications.
Belew contacted TCAT McKenzie ITSM Instructor, Jon McKinney, with his sales rep at Netgear, Rose Bell. After talking with Ms. Bell and one of Netgear Inc. network engineers, Keith Nielsen, they sent ITSM a lot of new hardware.
“The ITSM class at TCAT McKenzie is setup to train adult students in the field of Information Technology,” said McKinney. “We start with the very basics of computer repair, move into networking, copper and fiber optic cabling, VoIP phones/telephony, information security, and finally end with server maintenance. We have over one hundred hands on skills tests that teach the students using real world hardware in real world scenarios. We believe that having the theoretical knowledge is only part of the equation. The practical application of that knowledge is paramount in being a valuable technician in the information technology field.”
Once McKinney explained what is taught in the ITSM class and the fact the program puts students to work in the IT field in the surrounding area, Netgear Inc. said they would like to be a part of the school’s training and offered a generous donation of training equipment.
The ITSM Program received the following from Netgear Inc.: A large box of Netgear hardware; one M4250-10G2XF-PoE+ switch, one ProSafe GS728TP switch, one ProSafe S3300-28X-PoE+ switch, two ProSafe WAC510 access points, and one ProSafe WAC540 access point. The students were extremely excited to have more enterprise equipment to train with.
Areawide Communications in Medina, TN, donated several VoIP phones as well. Owner Sherrill Belew made the generous donation to the class after learning the VoIP/Telephony training equipment the class uses is set up for Avaya phones only.
Areawide businesses have hired several of the ITSM graduates over the years. Belew felt that it would be a win win situation being Area Wide Communications plans to hire more TCAT McKenzie graduates in the future and they would have experience with the hardware their company uses and supports.
ITSM certainly thanks Belew, the entire crew at Area Wide Communications, along with Rose Bell and Keith Nielsen from Netgear for the very generous donations.
