Courses will begin later this month for the first set of candidates selected to attain certification through Cisco Networking Academy for careers in information technology.And thanks to a generous donation through corporate partnership, two Bermudians have qualified to become instructors to teach the courses for the first time at the Bermuda College. Their names will be released at a press conference planned for later this week.Cisco Academy is a world leader in networking products and services used locally by the Bermuda Government, Belco, Bermuda CableVision, Capital G and investment companies.The names of the applicants were pulled in a lottery-style draw at the Ministry of Government Estates and Information Services on Thursday.The first set of successful candidates will embark on Cisco Certification Network Associate (CCNA) courses scheduled to begin at the end of this month. The second group will start in December.The evening courses will run for two nights per week, three hours a night for a full academic year in a fully outfitted lab at the Stonington campus.Students will be provided with a sign-on to the Cisco website to work on their own time and to collaborate with other students around the world.The CCNA courses consist of four modules, approximately 60 percent lab work and exercises which are based on industry scenarios to prepare students for jobs and higher education in engineering, computer science and related fields.Established in 1997, the programme is offered at more than 9,000 academies in the US and more than 165 countries around the world and taught in 16 different languages.Local participants will join more than 900,000 students in a global, virtual classroom for higher learning through the web-based curriculum.For Minister Michael Scott and Director of Information Technology Michael Oatley, the programme launch has been more than a year in the making since the Throne Speech announcement last year.The initiative to establish a Cisco Academy in Bermuda was the brainchild of former Minister of Information Services, Neletha Butterfield.Government retained the services of a qualified instructor from Heart Academy, in Jamaica, which is affiliated with Cisco, to train two Bermudian instructors this summer, using funds donated by Orbis Investment Management Limited.The Minister extended a special thank you to Orbis for its “special generous financial support” with the hope that moving forward many other private sector stakeholders will pitch in.Four Bermudians were shortlisted out of nine in the search, only two qualified to become instructors in a market where there were previously no qualified Bermudians.“This was made possible by the generous sponsorship support of Orbis, we deployed those funds to underwrite the entire instruction exercise. We’re extremely grateful for the partnership with this industry partner for their generous donation,” said Mr Scott.Some 50 students applied for the course, 37 qualified, including six women.The Minister said: “This is preparation for good jobs and excellent careers, CCNA certification will give them the foundation to move to the upper levels of Cisco qualifications.“We’re giving our young Bermudians the opportunity to start this journey to get to the point where they can become Chief Information Officers.“Orbis gave us a donation to assist with supporting the programme, and we used it largely to offset the cost of educating the instructors. Already two Bermudians have benefited from this programme.“We had the option of bringing in instructors because there were no CCNA certified instructors here. Now we can run the programme on a self-sustaining basis,” he added.Mr Oatley sees the launch as a new opportunity to expand technology opportunities for Bermudians.“I’ve had a good, long career in this field and have worked with a lot of people over the years. This just becomes another opportunity to help people either enter or advance in IT.“CCNA is a good entry certification, even for some individuals in the course who would be hoping to aspire to a job in IT.“There are others who are already employed in the field who may be looking to improve their resumé and improve their opportunities.“And so this particular programme will give them a good foundation to proceed along any of those lines; this is a very good thing,” said Mr Oatley.Mr Scott said he foresees great career opportunities being created for young Bermudians, both men and women in the future.“It opens up a world in an element of our economy as well because we compute billions of elements of data in this country and network engineers are the people who make it all make sense.“Once they’re qualified, just imagine if they get together to think about what they can do with their collective or compounded CISCO intellect. They can create new job opportunities in Bermuda for others.“This is the first step in plans to roll out the opportunities for younger students from the middle school level up who are approaching graduation,” said Mr Scott.“ We want to embrace the middle and senior schools, private schools and public school students on the opportunities presented by this new programme.”