AFCOM, IDCP Offer Scholarships

March 15, 2006 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Data center professional association AFCOM (afcom.com) announced on Tuesday it has partnered with the Institute for Data Center Professionals (idcp.org) at Marist College to award two of 30 scholarships to the IDCP's online data center certification program for 2006.

The $16,000 scholarships were awarded to Troy Montfort, TIS Facilities manager at Spectrum Health Hospitals in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Hazel Barnes, tech center operations and project coordinator at Nielsen Media Research in Oldsmar, Florida. The scholarship program is funded by a three-year "Partnerships for Innovation" grant from the National Science Foundation originally awarded in 2004 to Marist College for the IDCP.

This is the grant's second year, and the first by the NSF to recognize the data center industry as a field worthy of study. The NSF has pledged to subsidize all, or part, of at least 30 individual scholarships per year for the duration of the grant.

"The NSF grant validates this mission and a belief shared by the IDCP, AFCOM and other industry authorities that as the reliance on access to information has increased over time, so has the importance of the data center," says Barbara McMullen, director for IDCP at Marist College.