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Technical skills will take those interested in information technology careers only so far, say experts. While a BS degree may be all that's needed for entry-level jobs, many such positions have been outsourced, or may be soon.
Companies are looking for IT pros who understand not only technology, but business needs as well. So BSCS grads increasingly move on to graduate school before looking for work, or couple work experience with graduate studies.
"People well trained in IT have great opportunities ahead of them if they have the tools to know where the market is going," says Bob Carroll, managing director of information science and technology at California Institute of Technology (Caltech, Pasadena, CA). "Today companies are interested in the management and analysis of information at the metadata level, for instance, or in areas like data mining and grid computing." Caltech grads may now land on Wall Street rather than an academic venue, he notes.
Other faculty and administrators of IT grad programs echo Carroll's view. Dr Narain Gehani, dean of the college of computing sciences at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT, Newark, NJ) and a former VP at Bell Labs (Murray Hill, NJ), sees many students seeking specialized courses in areas like security and the management of outsourced projects. "Graduate degrees equip you for the more challenging jobs that aren't going away," he points out.
Study choices
At many schools it's possible to choose from among MS degrees in CS, CIS, MIS or IT, and several offer degrees with even more specialized designations. Some computer science departments are located within engineering departments; some departments focus on specific industry sectors, like healthcare, often under the auspices of a business school.
Interdepartmental degree programs are common and bring with them the benefit of exposure to faculty and students with varied orientations. Students at MIT's Sloan School (Cambridge, MA) find their access to the school's research centers particularly valuable, says career development director Jacqueline Wilbur. She advises undergraduates looking to advance in IT to work for a few years and then pursue a business degree. Some work experience, she says, makes graduate studies more applicable and makes students more attractive to employers.
Addressing the need for advanced IT
At Syracuse University's school of information studies, students emerging with MS in information management degrees have a powerful credential, says director Robert Heckman. "Given the pervasiveness of IT, IT problems can have a significant business impact," he notes. "Consulting, auditing and security firms have snapped up recent degree recipients."
Computer security experts will be especially sought after, says Andrew Wasser, an associate dean at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU, Pittsburgh, PA). CMU is recruiting minority students to specialize in this area through a summer internship program aimed at rising seniors at historically black colleges and universities. Successful participation can lead to an offer of full tuition plus stipend in CMU's very selective government information security graduate program, which has sent grads on to the NSA, CIA, FBI and the computer emergency response team (CERT) at the federally funded Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute.
One thing is clear: whether in the private or public sector, employers are looking for candidates with grad degrees, especially when they also have work experience. Some of the students interviewed for this story are even planning to pursue PhD degrees to prepare for corporate IT careers. A few plan careers in teaching, preparing the next generation of CS grads and helping other diverse techies advance in IT.
Abdiel Quezada: an IT masters at UTEP
Abdiel Quezada, who came to the U.S. from Mexico, learned the benefit of combining technical and business knowledge during his undergrad days at University of Texas-El Paso (UTEP, El Paso, TX), where he earned his CS degree in 2003. "When I did my co-op at Nortel Networks (Dallas, TX), I worked with a lot of students who came down from North Carolina and Iowa. They had a lot more business skills from their undergraduate studies than I did," he says.
He decided to enroll in UTEP's master of IT program to prepare for a managerial role in IT. "I like the mix of CS and IS courses," he says. "The program is great and the faculty very experienced."
He pondered his decision for a while, taking courses in other areas as an undergrad, but realized IT was a good fit for his curious nature. Besides working at Nortel, he also interned at a few El Paso companies doing Web applications development and found that he "enjoyed looking for all possibilities when implementing solutions."
Melody Garcia: graduate study at Syracuse
When Melody Garcia entered Syracuse University (Syracuse, NY), she was planning on a career as a civil engineer. After three years of engineering studies, however, she knew "the passion wasn't there." A counselor suggested information studies, and she found she appreciated the direct applicability of what she was learning and the real-world cases to which she was exposed.
Garcia expects to complete her BS in information management and technology in the spring of 2007. She is already looking forward to continuing her graduate studies at Syracuse's school of information studies. She says there are relatively few women in her classes, but she's found that being in the minority has given her visibility in the classroom. "The professors want to be certain the women don't feel intimidated and aren't excluded from class discussion, so they tend to call on you. That means always being prepared," she laughs.
Garcia says that one thing that has helped her be more comfortable as a Latina at Syracuse is the school's Black and Latino Information Studies Support group, which provided her with a mentor and summer 2006 employment with a Syracuse alum who is one of the organization's founders. Garcia worked for him at the risk-management consulting firm Kroll (New York, NY), and was thrilled to get hands-on experience in corporate networks. "I'm always trying to gain knowledge of what IT can offer me, and to develop a network I can use to advance in my career," she says.
Nowar Al-Naffouri: IS at Carnegie Mellon
Nowar Al-Naffouri is already experienced in technology, thanks to a 1992 BSEE from Damascus University (Damascus, Syria) and IT work experience in Dubai. Al-Naffouri came to Carnegie Mellon University (CMU, Pittsburgh, PA) from her native Saudi Arabia in 2004 to learn about American culture and develop IT business skills.
She entered Carnegie Mellon's master of information systems management (MISM) program, where the majority of her classmates were international students, and enjoyed the flexibility of combining courses from the Heinz School of Public Policy with those from the business and CS schools. "I loved bridging the gap between technology and IT concepts as they applied to various industries," she says. "I took very technical courses along with management and policy."
She appreciated CMU's networking events with alums who provided valuable career advice. To gain experience she may some day take back to her home, Al-Naffouri is now working as a business intelligence consultant with MicroStrategy in Chicago, "helping decision makers in different industries use business intelligence solutions. BI solutions are usually integrated with existing enterprise apps."
Lydie Ngo Um applies her CMU education at Expedia
Lydie Ngo Um, a native of Cameroon, came to CMU's MISM program from the Sorbonne (Paris, France). She earned a BA there in 2002, then earned two masters, one in history and the other in information and knowledge-based systems, while working for Maporama (the French equivalent of Mapquest) and operating her own business advising African clients how to improve their Web presence.
As her clients' requests for services became more complex, Ngo Um decided that studying at a highly regarded U.S. university would be a logical next step. "I knew the reputation of Carnegie Mellon and felt the university would give me an edge," she says. She completed her MISM degree in 2006.
Her job, as program manager for business in France at the travel company Expedia (Seattle, WA), also educated her. "I learned that, in the U.S., you need to set you own career goals and ask for what you really want," says Ngo Um. While working as an Expedia intern in the summer of 2005, she expressed her reservations about staying in the U.S. and her desire to return to France and Africa. Out of that came the job she has now, which takes her to France every six weeks or so.
Jane Mepham: work at Staples and a WPI degree
Jane Mepham came to the U.S. from Kenya focused on education for a career in technology. She earned a BS in CS and math from Worcester State College (Worcester, MA) in 1998, and then worked at nearby Applix (Westborough, MA) as a QA engineer. She always intended to return to school, and thought an MBA would be most beneficial.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI, Worcester, MA) offered a master of operations and IT geared to professionals with technical experience. She enrolled as a part-time student in the fall of 2000 just as she changed jobs to become an Oracle DBA at Staples (Framingham, MA). She took a year off to plan her wedding in Kenya, and completed her degree in the fall of 2004. She now has two children and is still an Oracle DBA at Staples, but several levels above where she started.
Through WPI's interdepartmental programming Mepham shared courses with students pursuing MBAs and marketing degrees as well as a few MSCS students. She also benefited from the diversity of the student body. "There were a few people from Africa and others from India, China, South America and Europe," she says. "We'd have fantastic discussions and online postings. It was an interesting group.
"One of my grad school goals was to build my people skills to serve me in business," says Mepham. "Most of my classes taught me things I could use at work right away."
Meina Li pursues a graduate IT degree at IIT
Meina Li came to the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT, Chicago, IL) in 2004, armed with her 2003 BSIT from Chengdu University of Technology (Chengdu City, China) and some work experience with a Chinese telephone company where she did DBA and customer service with international clients.
Li admits that her first couple of months in IIT's MSIT classes were difficult because of the language barrier. She has since become more fluent. And as IIT's international coordinator for Chinese students, she's now in a position to help other new arrivals adjust to Chicago and American culture along with their studies.
Li is already looking beyond her degree, which she expects to complete in the fall of 2007. She hopes for experience with an American company that will let her return to a good job in China. "I want to see how American IT works and get some practical management experience. I'd like to work for a global company that might give me the opportunity to travel back home," she says. In the meantime she's busy interning in IIT's IT department and working with her fellow Chinese students.
Dr Min Zhao: PhD from Pitt to a job at HP
Dr Min Zhao already had a 1999 MSCS from Jiaotong University (Xi'an, China) when she decided to head to the University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, PA). She earned another MSCS in 2001 on the way to her 2006 PhD in CS. A protégée of Dr Mary Lou Soffa, with whom she studied and conducted research at Pitt, Zhao says she loves CS, "because every day brings more new and interesting things."
Although Zhao was one of relatively few Chinese women in her program, she estimates that 80 percent of Pitt's CS grad students are international. Like Meina Li, she had a difficult adjustment from her Chinese culture and language to that of Pittsburgh. She got a lot of help, she says, from the support services for international students at Pitt, including English classes for grad students and a "sibling program" that matches older students with new students to help them find housing and settle down.
Zhao recommends Pitt for others interested in graduate CS studies, because it offers interesting courses and a very cooperative research environment. She is now a software engineer at Hewlett Packard's Cupertino, CA office, using her PhD to continue her work on new compilers.
Guadalupe Canahuate: Fulbright scholar at Ohio State
Guadalupe Canahuate earned her BSCS at Pontificia Universidad Cat—lica Madre y Maestra (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic) and worked for two years as a database administrator at a software development company. Then she decided she wanted to see how things were done outside her native Dominican Republic. She received a prestigious Fulbright scholarship, and chose to pursue an MS in computer science and engineering at Ohio State University (OSU, Columbus, OH), because of its reputation in the field.
Canahuate began her studies at OSU in the fall of 2002 and completed her MS in December 2003, in part because she opted for OSU's coursework track, which moves more quickly than its thesis track. She is now less than two years away from completing her PhD. She has appreciated the support of faculty, especially while she adapted to speaking English. Canahuate is among many international grad students at OSU; most of the students in her department are from Asia.
Canahuate currently works as a research assistant to fund her degree. She plans on getting a job in IT and staying there for a year after school before returning to the Dominican Republic, possibly to teach other Hispanic students interested in IT careers. "I didn't need an advanced degree to move up in a career there. I could have learned on the job and been promoted," she says. "But I wanted a broader knowledge of my field."
NJIT's Norma Spence: business insight and tech skills
In 2004 Norma Spence became the first black woman to graduate from the University of Vermont (UVM, Burlington, VT) with a CS degree. Jamaica-born Spence says, "Even though only six percent of the school is minority and only one percent black, I never experienced any racism. I had great support all the way through."
Spence says that finding a job after graduation was difficult, because "I didn't know how to market myself." She took a position as a customer support programmer at a Newark, NJ trade and transportation info company, and then moved into the IT department when a junior developer job opened up in the fall of 2005. She simultaneously began her MSCS at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT, Newark, NJ), where she had attended a summer program in high school. Working while going to school makes course work immediately applicable, she says, and gives her a practical grasp of her work's impact on her studies.
At NJIT Spence is also gaining business insights. "I want to wind up someplace where I can have an influence on what software and systems are being used," she says. "Because I love the mathematical and theoretical sides of things, I might end up doing something like cryptology with the NSA or working for a financial institution on Wall Street."
Jason Mars focuses on research at the University of Virginia
Jason Mars can see himself in an academic career, but acknowledges that he may well wind up in corporate America because so much cutting-edge research is being funded there. Mars came to the University of Virginia (UVa, Charlottesville, VA) in the spring of 2006 at the suggestion of his mentor, Dr Mary Lou Soffa. Soffa, who was also Min Zhao's mentor, moved from Pitt to UVa to be chair of its CS department. Mars found her enthusiasm for some of his early independent research projects inspirational and, after earning his BSCS from Pitt in the spring of 2005, followed her to UVa where he is working with her on compiler technology and virtual execution techniques.
"I'm a big research guy with a passion for solving problems," says Mars. "I find computation limitlessly creative, and I love finding clever ways to make programs faster, more secure and more reliable. That's why CS intrigues me, the unpredictability of what will enable computers to do more."
Mars chose to pursue a PhD rather than an MS because he is interested in publishing some of his research. He is one of few African Americans in his program, and was one of even fewer at Pitt, but he hasn't found race to be an issue. He would like to see more people of color embracing technology. A pre-high school robotics program during his fifth grade summer fired his interest. "Exposure at an early age is key to getting more blacks into technology," he says. "Regardless of where I take this degree, I want to expose underrepresented groups to technology, so kids will say, 'I can totally relate to that.'"
UVa's Kristen Walcott loves doing research
Like Jason Mars, Kristen Walcott is pursuing her PhD at University of Virginia out of a love of research and computer science. She's been doing research on time-constraint test-case prioritization since her undergrad days. Also like Mars, she knows what it feels like to be part of an underrepresented group. She graduated as the only female computer science/math major in her 2005 class at Allegheny College (Meadville, PA) and is happy that she's found many other female CS students at UVa.
Walcott chose UVa because of its close-knit community and warm support system. "I know there's always someone here to listen to me, someone who cares about what I'm doing," says Walcott. She says that her dual undergraduate major, for which she wrote two theses, was rigorous enough that she already felt familiar with the demands of graduate work when she landed as a published scholar in Charlottesville.
With most likely four years of study ahead of her before she's granted her PhD, Walcott hopes to find a job as a professor where she can help interest girls in CS as a career. She is working with the Association of Computing Machinery-Women to coordinate outreach programs to middle- and high-school girls. "I want to help girls realize that CS is more than just coding."
UTEP PhD student Irbis Gallegos hopes to teach CS
Irbis Gallegos admits he had a steep learning curve when he came to the U.S. from Mexico. He spent many high-school months focused primarily on improving his English. When it came time for college the University of Texas-El Paso (UTEP) appealed to him because of its many Hispanic students.
Gallegos became interested in computers as a teenager and had a theory that they would replace teachers. Ironically, after completing his BSCS at UTEP, he has decided to pursue a PhD in CS and hopes to join the faculty of a research university. "Hispanics can make a big difference when they graduate," he says. "I'd like to make the process of getting there less difficult for students like me."
What has he enjoyed most so far about his graduate studies, which he hopes to complete in 2008? "My interaction with the UTEP faculty. There are people here from all over the world," he says, "and they've really made a difference to me." He notes with a laugh that his experience at UTEP has made it clear to him that computers cannot do the jobs of teachers. "There's no way to replace the interaction between students and teachers. I realize now that computers are an aid to the teaching process."
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