(WACO, Texas) – Texas State Technical College’s Web Design and Development program is shifting into the world of artificial intelligence.
The program is working with a more than $198,000 grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s Texas Reskilling and Upskilling Through Education 2025-27 Grant Program in consultation with Education Strategy Group to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) implementation specialist certificate program scheduled to debut as early as fall 2027. Some of the topics the program could touch on include AI data systems, cloud infrastructure, programming language and vision computing.
“AI advances at a significantly faster pace than traditional information technology,” said Emanuel Palacios, TSTC’s dean of digital transformation. “The intent of the (program) design is to not create the curriculum and skill sets based-on short term trending-type changes in AI, but more a skill set needed to integrate AI into platforms and digital tools.”
Eric Castro, director of alignment for the statewide online Web Design and Development program, said a third-party content provider can update course material as the field advances.
Grant money was also used to perform a job market analysis, which found AI-job heat locations being Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, with Abilene simmering with opportunities due to data center construction. In the midst of the work, an AI industry planning committee was established to rank industry skills critical for students to learn.
“Ai has moved incredibly fast,” Castro said.
Program staff are gathering information as a member of the National Applied AI Consortium’s 2025-26 mentorship cohort.
“It’s giving us free professional development for the faculty,” Castro said. “They have a lot of resources for faculty that will be teaching AI-related courses. They give us resources for curriculum development and they facilitate the partnerships between the companies that offer content like Intel, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, to facilitate us being able to use that content.”
TSTC’s program has been connected with Beth Muturi, an AI instructor in Miami-Dade College’s School of Engineering and Technology in Florida. Muturi said showing others what AI is about brings opportunities to understand the field. In her faculty position, she said it is a great way to help students join the field and make a difference.
“Something I have seen in academia rise to the occasion is the adaptation of AI,” she said. “ I have seen a trend of schools making better strategies and upskilling faculty.”
Registration for the summer and fall semester is now underway. For more information on TSTC, go to tstc.edu.