In an announcement Friday, IBM unveiled an educational partnership between its 2-year-old Academic Initiative program and the Appalachian College Association (ACA) that will bring US$5 million in software, IT workshops, faculty training, technical services and discounts on hardware at the ACA's 35 two- and four-year liberal arts colleges and universities.

The plan is that the professors will take the lessons they've learned from the training and bring it into their classrooms starting next fall and share it with some of the 39,000 students that attend the member schools.

'IBM is concerned about where its next IT workers are going to come from,' said Martin Ramsey, chief instructional technologist for the nonprofit ACA consortium. 'They should come from Appalachia.'

This is a part of the world, he said, that has been behind the curve in terms of technology for decades if not centuries. 'We're in a global economy, and being from Appalachia is no excuse. With the global economy, we need to compete on the world stage.'

The program will aim to motivate and train students to seek careers in IT in an area of the nation where college graduation rates lag 35 percent behind the U.S. average, according to figures provided by the Appalachian Regional Commission, a federal-state partnership that works to create opportunities for self-sustaining economic development and improved quality of life in the region.