General Motors has opened its fourth IT center near Phoenix

General Motors announced on Friday that it has officially opened its fourth information technology innovation center in Chandler, Arizona. The location of the new IT center was announced back in March of last year, and construction of the center was completed in the Phoenix suburb in June.

“We have made significant progress transforming GM IT over the past 20 months,” Randy Mott, the senior vice president of global information technology at General Motors, said in a statement. “The success of the Chandler Innovation Center is yet another important proof point that illustrates our progress.”

This IT center will be the Detroit-based automaker’s fourth, with the other three being located in Michigan, Texas, and Georgia. It will employ 1,000 full-time workers over the next five years, but is only starting with around 500, a quarter of which are recent college graduates.

Mott said that his team was very surprised at the “overwhelming” interest that students showed in looking to work for one of the automaker’s IT centers. Most of the employees that are working at the Chandler center have graduated from Arizona institutions, including Arizona State University and University of Arizona. “GM is targeting recruitment efforts at up to a dozen key universities within each geographic region,” Mott said in the statement.

Read more about the story at Arizona Central.