The first Cisco CCNA certification workshop of the Fall semester took place October 7, 2009 in the University of Houston College of Technology AT&T Laboratory (UH COT AT&T Lab). The workshop was sponsored by the Department of Commerce' Economic Development Administration (EDA).

Dan Owen (CCIE #9343), Senior Network Designer of AT&T, taught the workshop with the assistance of Sergio Chacon, UH COT Lab Manager. Dan Owen has worked as Network Engineer @ NASA for 11 years and has been been 12 years as a Network Design Specialist @ AT&T, Inc. He holds an B.A. from the University of Houston.

Students from industry and academia were introduced to Cisco devices, routers and switches, and the Cisco IOS software. In addition, routing protocols were studied in various configurations. All the hands-on laboratories were performed on devices connected to the University of Houston College of Technology Research and Education Network (UH COT NET).

The University of Houston began developing the workshop series early in 2009 by creating partnerships with industry. Every UH COT workshop is created with the collaboration of an industry partner.

The next Cisco CCNA workshop is scheduled for November 5, 2009. Other certifications workshops taught in the UH AT&T Lab include Juniper Networks, EMC2 Information Management and Storage, VMWare Server Virtualization, Voice over IP, and IEEE Wireless.

Jim Segovia, AT&T Account Manager for UH, commented: "We (AT&T) are glad to have one of our engineers teach this workshop. This is proof of AT&T commitment to higher education and the University of Houston."