Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
FACULTY
The mission of our department is to provide the highest quality of information systems
and information technology education to prepare practitioners for careers in the application
of information systems and technology. Our faculty members are hired on the basis of their
industrial experience as well as their academic credentials. Faculty members are not required
to hold a doctorate degree; however, a Masters degree plus three to five years of industrial
experience is typically expected of all members of faculty. Presently, there are 2.5 faculty
members and an Instructional Specialist (lecturer) supporting the database courses. They
have spent time on projects and achieved various certifications and recognitions. Their
experience covers the majority of topical areas in the database industry, from developing and
deploying applications ranging from personal databases through large-scale, n-tier distrib-
uted systems and multi-terabyte data warehouses.
INDUSTRIAL ADVISORY BOARD
Currently, the department has two Industrial Advisory Boards, one for the general IT
degree and one for the telecommunications specialization. The advisory boards are com-
posed of leading information professionals from well-known companies with large IT or
networking departments. These are also the employers of many of our graduates. The chosen
representatives are in positions in which they are monitoring the marketplace and helping to
make decisions about future directions for their companies. This puts them in a unique
position to help guide us on the employee skills they will need in the future. Their suggestions
are always carefully considered and often incorporated into new courses and curricula. The
goal is for each board to meet on a regular basis at one- to two-year intervals to provide this
valuable feedback. The advisory board for the general IT degree met in the past year to review
and critique the proposed tracks. They were quite supportive of this new curriculum and were
anxious to recruit our graduates. In fact, they challenged us to implement the new curriculum
in less than the typical four-year window of a new curriculum.
MODEL CURRICULA
The IEEE and the ACM created a joint task force to update the 1991 curriculum
recommendations. The most recent report, available at the ACM Web site, identified
Information Management (IM) as a knowledge area within their Computing Curricula 2001.
The IM area of knowledge includes 14 components. Three are considered core, and 11 are
viewed as electives. The courses in our database track provide significant coverage of the
IM areas identified. Additionally, we provide the Database Administration course that is
beyond the model. Table 2 shows the mapping from the IM components to our DB-track
courses.
FUTURE TRENDS
For our university, the new curriculum implementing the track concept started in Fall
2001. In Spring 2003, the current freshmen will be required to select their track of interest. At
that time, we will begin monitoring the demand for this track.
