Asked to name one of the nations’ historic centers for the internet’s growth, many people would likely single out Silicon Valley. Yet, a small suburban area of Virginia, formerly the home of gravel pits and dairy farms, occupies its own place in the tech story.

Tysons Corner, Virginia, is where Steve Case worked to get AOL off the ground in the mid-1980s, and it has become the home for much of the internet’s governance with companies such as Dynamic Network Services Inc. (internet infrastructure) and VeriSign, Inc. (domain names). It is also the area where Northern Virginia Community College is based, and with more than 100,000 students and six campuses, the school is building its own tech reputation.

“We’re the biggest college that nobody’s heard of, outside of our region,” said Scott Ralls (pictured), president of Northern Virginia Community College. “Our niche is information technology. The internet runs through our region.”

Ralls spoke with Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS Imagine: A Better World event in Seattle, Washington. They discussed a new degree program in cloud computing and the technology skills needed for a career in the industry. (* Disclosure below.)

Two-year cloud computing degree

In June, the college announced that it would collaborate with the Amazon Web Services Inc. Educate program to offer a Cloud Computing specialized degree starting this fall. The two-year degree program is designed to help students attain the necessary credentials for a career in the cloud industry.

“We have the highest concentration of cloud computing cyber degrees; that’s why the AWS partnership opportunity is so key for us,” Ralls explained. “We have a lot of employers in our region that hire based on AWS credentials.”

The degree curriculum builds on a variety of application and programming skills, including Security Plus, Linux Plus and Python. “We’re using that intelligence to build out what the degree should look like,” Ralls said. “We’re paying attention to how AWS hires and how the information technology users of AWS are hiring.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Imagine: A Better World event. (* Disclosure: Amazon Web Services Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither AWS nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE