About

Music classroom to AI lab.

I lead the Network, Cybersecurity, and Cloud department at Central Piedmont; serve as graduate faculty at UNC Charlotte; teach Applied Innovation in Wingate's Honors program; and co-PI an NSF ATE grant building one of NC's first associate-degree AI programs.

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Dr. Frazier A. Smith

Wingate → VMware → Wingate

I started as a music education major at Wingate University and stayed on as Educational Technology Specialist after graduating in 2014. A decade later — after senior instructional design and content development roles at Belk, CPI Security, SnapAV, Anomali, Carbon Black, VMware, Broadcom, and Fast Lane — I came back to Wingate as adjunct in the Honors program, only this time co-teaching applied AI.

In between: I led a 12-person content team at VMware responsible for sixteen courses across vSphere, VMware Cloud, and HCX — work that drove $40M in customer revenue in 2022. I modernized the team's development process from ADDIE to a SAM-based, agile approach suited to the pace of SaaS. As senior instructor, I led the Carbon Black and VMware on AWS portfolio with a global instructor rating consistently above 4.95.

Now I run a 3-pathway IT department (IT Support, Cybersecurity, Cloud & Networking) at Central Piedmont. I've built collaborations with Red Hat and Palo Alto Networks, redesigned entry-level courses, and mentored student data-center workers connecting classroom content to live infrastructure.

My research focus: how AI is reshaping entry-level IT work, and what post-secondary CTE has to do about it.

Career history

Education

Certifications

Honors & Awards