For some time, there has been controversy over a so-called “tech shortage” — a dearth of highly skilled tech workers in the U.S. There is a growing contention that companies looking to save a buck by hiring foreign workers have blown the idea of a native shortage out of proportion. Wherever the truth lies, one company is taking a proactive approach to maximizing the pool of tech talent trained to solve tomorrow’s problems.

Colleen Cassity, executive director, Oracle Education Foundation and Oracle Giving & Volunteers, spoke about the company’s efforts to nurture tomorrow’s developers and engineers here and abroad. She told John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during Oracle OpenWorld that each year Oracle gives tens of millions of dollars to nonprofit and nongovernment organizations. It has some 140,000 employees around the world who work with these organization on education, environment and community initiatives.

On the education front, one of the fruits of Oracle’s work is its new charter high school in California. Named Design Tech High School, the pilot is based on the immersive, days-long training programs Oracle offers youth. “One of the things that’s so special about Design Tech High School is that it’s mission is to develop students who believe the world can be a better place and that they are the ones that can make it so,” she said.

Beyond nuts and bolts

Design Tech High School, which targets typically underserved demographics, aims to instill values that will serve progressive technologists of the future, Cassity said.

“You need to understand subject matter and have a broad knowledge base, obviously — all of us do. But more importantly than that, you need to be a lifelong learner,” she explained. “And you need to have a sense of self-direction and self-efficacy that whatever new thing it is that I need to learn to adapt to changing situations — I can learn that. Whatever challenge or problem you may encounter, I can be the designer of the solution to that problem.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Oracle OpenWorld.

(* Disclosure: Oracle and other companies sponsor some OpenWorld segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Oracle nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo by SiliconANGLE