Another of Lyons' advisers is former student Dawn Maxey, who graduated from the networking program in 2000 and is now a network technician at Boston law firm Brown Rudnick Berlack Israels LLP. Maxey says that as a student, she found the curriculum at Bunker Hill relevant enough, but an internship she did was even more important. "Getting the hands-on experience is crucial," she says, adding that the internship and her job in Bunker Hill's computer lab seemed to weigh more heavily with employers than her technical skills.

Lyons' focus now is on getting Hart, Maxey and other advisers to help bolster the internship program, which she says should provide the combination of coursework and training employers tell her they're looking for.

A robust internship program is one of the most valuable aspects of a community college education, but building such a program is one of the toughest assignments facing people in Lyons' position, says the NWCET's Mikolaski. "Setting them up is a massive task," she says, "so it requires the involvement of CEOs, college presidents and deans to commit the resources to sustain them."

Keeping community college courses relevant is "always going to be a challenge because the technology changes so rapidly that it's tough to anticipate employers' needs," says Arlene Peterson, a senior data network analyst at Northwest Airlines Corp. in Eagan, Minn.

Northwest doesn't have much turnover in IT and doesn't hire many community college graduates, yet it considers Inver Hills Community College a key training partner for its internal IT staff. The airline is one of eight companies that have joined with the Inver Grove Heights, Minn.-based college to identify common needs in IT training and seek state grant funding so that Inver Hills can purchase equipment and develop curricula.