GRANTEE:                   Computer Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) Educational Foundation (#2)

ADDRESS:                  1815 South Meyers Road, Suite 300

                             Oakbrook Terrace, IL  60181

AMOUNT:                    $3,000,000

DURATION:                January 5, 2004 - January 5, 2007 (36 months)

POPULATION SERVED:  The project will serve a total of 1,091 incumbent Information Technology (IT) workers from MetLife (600), IBM (450), and two small business partners:  OTAi (25) and ComputerLand (16).  Workers will be located at nine locations in Illinois, Florida, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION:  This project is an expansion of the H-1B grant partnership between MetLife and IBM previously awarded by ETA.  Both companies use a total of 1,800 H-1B visa workers among their IT ranks.

Training for MetLife employees will be performed by third-party training providers and proprietary software providers.  Training for IBM employees will be performed by in-house training providers and will use traditional classroom training, e-learning, distance instruction, and CD-ROM delivery methods.  The two small business partners will use classroom instruction at local universities and local software vendors/training providers.

Occupations targeted for training include web designers, web developers, network architects, systems engineers, software engineers, database administrators, systems analysts, software quality assurance specialists, application developers, IT project managers, and IT security specialists.

Employer partners have committed to providing $3,200,000 in matching funds through release-time salaries paid to employees while they receive training.  The grantee has committed to providing $222,677 in matching in-kind staff and programmatic support to this project.  Total match commitment is $3,422,677.

Ninety percent of all trainees (982 people) will complete the training program.  At least 80 percent of trainees (873 people) will receive a net wage gain of between three to five percent or a bonus at the end of the grant period, based on their performance and business conditions.  The grantee expects that each $1 in Federal dollars will result in a $1.10 in increase employee salaries based on these proposed outcomes.

KEY PARTICIPANTS:  CompTIA, MetLife, IBM, OTAi, ComputerLand, Jacksonville WorkSource Career Center, Technology Institute of the South at Florida Community College of Jacksonville, University of Missouri at St. Louis

MEDIA CONTACT:    John Engram

                            (630) 678-8352