Eyes and Ears on the IT Marketplace

Here in ACU's School of Information Technology and Computing we are continually striving to keep our eyes and ears on the IT marketplace. This is all in an effort to keep our ideas fresh, our curriculum relevant, and our focus market-driven.

A couple of items were recently posted on the InformationWeek website that are worth noting. The first one, posted on March 3 in the Global CIO series, is titled "Hiring for IT Jobs Holds Up." The article reports on the results of the most recent Robert Half Technology IT Hiring Index, a survey of 1,400 CIOs, suggesting that IT hiring will increase in the next few months. The article indicates that individuals with experience in network administration and Windows administration will be in particular demand. Of course, these kinds of indicators don't always translate into jobs for new grads with 4-year degrees; but they do tell us something important about the marketplace as we recruit students to our school.

The second article, which also appeared in the Global CIO series back on February 23, is titled "Microsoft Hopes to Train 2 Million in IT by 2012." This program is part of Microsoft's Elevate America program. The company intends to offer free online training in basic technology and Microsoft certification programs through partnerships with state and local agencies, nonprofits, and community organizations. Clearly Microsoft won't do this just to be altruistic; but it is definitely a sign of the times that the demand for IT skills is certainly far from dead.

Ah, Spring Break

For those of you out there in real-life business-land, I realize that the concept of Spring Break is a little foreign. Here in the hallowed halls of academia it is a welcome sign of relief from the relentless paper chase. After this short pause, it will be an all-out assault for about 2 more months, and then it's over. It's really amazing how quickly 16 weeks can pass.

Lots of good things happening around campus in conjunction with ACU's iPhone initiative. Last week the university hosted a fairly substantial conference to highlight its accomplishments in this arena. ACU continues to get good press and garner lots of accolades for its efforts to incorporate the iPhone into the educational paradigm. AT&T and Apple continue to be willing and appreciative partners in the effort.

For our part the iSchool continues to look for ways to get students directly involved in applications development. We want them to become involved early in their careers, but they often don't have the necessary skills until they have been around for a couple of years, and many of them enjoy playing with the phones more than programming for them. We are open to suggestions about how to crack this nut.