Additional capacity has been added to almost all courses that have full enrollment, and several classes have been moved into larger classrooms to accommodate more students. ITMM 471 and ITMM 571 has had two new sections added, 15855 ITMM 471-03 and 15858 ITMM 571-04, which will allow students to view the course live via video in SB-201. Students waitlisted for ITMM 471 or ITMM 571 should register for these sections instead, as we cannot add any more capacity to the -01 sections. If you are waitlisted for a live class at this point, you can hope someone will drop and you can pick it their seat, but if you have not been notified of a seat being open for you by Friday of next week, you need to register for an alternative class. We cannot add any more capacity to ITM 301, ITM 312, ITMD 456, or ITMO 444-01/544-01.

It is with great sadness that I inform all of you that Jeff Kimont, Adjunct Industry Associate Professor of Information Technology and Management, passed away over the weekend.

Jeff has a long history with IIT, dating back to his work as a student at Midwest College of Engineering. He began teaching with the Computer Science Department in 1994 and has worked with the Center of Professional Development, the School of Applied Technology, and the Information Technology and Management program from the inception of each. He was the first full-time faculty member in the Information Technology and Management degree programs.

Over his long career here, Jeff was beloved by students and admired by his peers. He has skillfully taught multiple generations of software programmers, and our program is stronger and the lives of his students are better due to him.

Further details for an upcoming memorial will be posted here as we receive them.

Bob
C. Robert Carlson
Dean, IIT School of Applied Technology

Undergraduates in the Bachelor of Information Technology and Management degree can now complete a graduate degree simultaneously with their undergraduate degree, while maintaining their undergraduate status (and undergraduate financial aid!) In most normal circumstances, students can complete both degrees in five years of study, or in three years for many transfer students. To be eligible for the Co-Terminal Degree Program, students must:

• be a full-time Undergraduate student at IIT
• have completed at least 3 semesters as a full-time Undergraduate student or have 60 or more credit hours of Undergraduate course-work
• have a minimum Undergraduate GPA of 3.25
  (This means that transfer students may not apply until during their second term at IIT and cannot commence their graduate studies until their third term)

The degree combinations currently available under this program are:

• Bachelor of Information Technology and Management and Master of Cyber Forensics and Security
• Bachelor of Information Technology and Management and Master of Information Technology and Management

We have a course matrix showing a sample program of study for each option. You may note that three courses are counted towards both the undergraduate and graduate degrees; in the BITM to MITM, they are all required undergraduate courses, but in the BITM to MCFS, there are some specific undergraduate electives that must be taken. For more details please see the Co-Terminal Degree information page at https://www.iit.edu/academics/undergraduate-programs/accelerated-masters-program. To apply for the program, log in to the my.iit.edu portal, select the Academics tab and navigate to the Graduate Admissions – Student channel, then select the IIT Co-Terminal Degree Program Application hyperlink, or just click on the link right here. Questions? Contact the ITM Associate Chair, Ray Trygstad: trygstad@iit.edu or 630.447.9009.

IIT Information Technology and Management students presented and demonstrated their Real-Time Communications projects to a crowd of communications professionals on May 1. Students were challenged to conduct research,and test and deploy solutions as part of the project-based learning approach at IIT School of Applied Technology. Unlike a final exam, these students had to provide a working system and defend it in front of a crowd of industry professionals—some with 30 years of experience.

Sponsors of the event included IIT School of Applied Technology, IEEE ComSoc and IEEE Fox Valley Subsection. Professor Carol Davids chaired the sessions and coordinated the student projects. The NG911 project was mentored by Joe Cusimano of Data-TelSystem Solutions. Several former IIT students also attended the event.

Read more…

Timing is everything, and students focusing on Information Technology and Management seem to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time to take advantage of significant growth in cloud computing jobs.

7 Million New Cloud Computing Jobs by 2015

According to a Forbes review of an IDC report, sponsored by Microsoft, demand for “cloud-ready” IT workers will “grow by 26% annually through 2015. IDC expects that as many as 7 million new cloud-related jobs will be available worldwide by that time”. The author of the IDC report (Cushing Anderson) says that “Unlike IT skill shortages in the past, solving this skills gap is extremely challenging, given that cloud brings a new set of skills, which haven’t been needed in the past.”

Cloud-Related Positions Going Unfilled

According to the Forbes article, “lack of training, certification or experience” are the top three reasons cloud positions go un-filled. Anderson says several skill sets are key to building and maintaining cloud capabilities within organizations. These are listed in the table below, along with projected openings for 2015:

From IDC Report as Reported in Forbes 12/21/2012

In an earlier article Forbes’ writer Joe McKendrick suggested what IT professionals (future and present) should be learning in order to succeed in cloud-related jobs. His list seems to be right in line with the IDC report:

• Business and financial skills: Know how to make a business case and calculate an ROI for cloud.
• Technical skills: Java, .NET framework skills and knowledge of virtualization are important, and familiarity with open-source tools and languages is also valuable.
• Enterprise architecture and business needs analysis: Be able to build a “roadmap” for which services should be provided by IT and which by an outside provider. Learn to speak the language of business as well as the language of IT professionals
• Project management skills: Managing scope “creep”, contracts, service agreements and risk exposure are just some of the project management skills critical to implementing cloud. Cloud computing can cause end users to “run wild” with feature and service requests, so scope has to be contained. Also, remembering that cloud is supposed to cost less than equivalent on-premises services, skills in negotiating cloud vendors’ contracts, service level agreements and availability are critical to success.
• Security and compliance: Understanding security protocols is important in all types of cloud deployment. Additionally, regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA have made navigating data-handling laws more complex. IT professionals with an understanding of both can be very valuable.
• Data integration and analysis skills: Inside we have ERP systems, data warehouses, etc. Outside we have cloud-based services. Those who can analyze both sides and implement sound data integration between the two will be in high demand.
• Mobile app development and management: The rise of mobile devices of all kinds has been key driver for the expansion of cloud solutions. A sound understanding of the basics is a valuable skill in cloud-implementation.

So how does the future look for those with a solid grounding in Cloud, Information Technology, and Management? All in all, it looks anything but cloudy.

References:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2012/12/21/almost-1-7-million-cloud-related-jobs-went-unfilled-in-2012-estimate/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2012/08/27/the-8-most-important-skills-needed-for-cloud-computing-today/

Dr. Gregory N. Hughes of RPI is inducted into Gamma Nu Eta by Bill Wesselman, IIT Beta Chapter president

The 2013 National Conference of Gamma Nu Eta, the National Information Technology Honor Society, was hosted by IIT’s School of Applied Technology on April 5th through the 7th. Industry Professor of Information Technology and Management Ray Trygstad is the Chair of the ΓNH National Board of Directors and the Adviser of IIT’s Beta Chapter. IIT Beta Chapter’s Charter President, Madeleine England–who now serves as the Chapter Administrator–and Beta Chapter President Bill Wesselman are also members of the National Board of Gamma Nu Eta. During the meeting, Bill Wesselman inducted Dr. Gregory N. Hughes, founder of the information technology degree program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, as a Professional Member of IIT’s Beta Chapter of Gamma Nu Eta. Prior to his appointment as the first Vice Provost for Information Technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Dr. Hughes had a distinguished career as a senior executive at AT&T/Lucent Technologies, and as President of AT&T’s Transmission Systems Business he received the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award from President George Bush.

The Fall 2013 DRAFT ITM Course Schedule matrix is now available for download. This shows ITM live courses as they are currently scheduled. The full Fall 2013 IIT Course Schedule will be live on the Web on Monday, March 25, 2013, and registration will open for selected students on Monday, April 8, 2013.

In addition to the live courses and their corresponding online sections, there will be one online-only topics course on Mainframe Technologies which will include live labs on an IBM mainframe system. A new course for Fall is ITMO 417/ITMO 517, Shell Scripting for System Administration, which will be taught by Sam Shamsuddin. We will also be offering the UNIX sysadmin course, ITMO 452/ITMO 552, and for Grad students specializing in Systems Analysis, MIS and Data Management, Dean Oob Carlson will be teaching ITMT 531 Object Oriented System Analysis, Modeling and Design, a course you DO NOT want to miss out on. Also at the Rice Campus, we will be offering a Monday afternoon session of ITMS 448/ITMS 548 Cyber Security Technologies as well as the usual Wednesday evening section. ITMS 555 Mobile Device Forensics will run at Rice on Monday evenings. ITMS 443/ITMS 543 Vulnerability Analysis and Control (Ethical Hacking) will run on Tuesday evenings at Rice and will also run online with a requirement to attend the first class session live; we’ll work something out for transportation for Main Campus students for that session. Jeremy Hajek will teach ITMT 492 Embedded Systems and Reconfigurable Logic Design on Wednesday afternoons at Rice. At the Main Campus ITMO 456 Intro to Open Source Operating Systems (Linux+) will run as a live lab course on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons; this will be an acceptable substitute for ITM 302 which is not being offered. ITMO 455/ITMO 555 which will cover iOS development this term will run in the Idea Shop on Monday evenings. Noland Joiner, our authority on healthcare IT, will again teach the Introduction to Healthcare IT course on Thursday evenings. This is the prerequisite for a projected four additional graduate-level courses in Healthcare IT, so if you want to take those be sure to grab this class.

We expect to offer a late afternoon Rice Campus bus as well as the early afternoon bus we currently run, so students only doing an evening course at Rice can come out later. We are planning that both of the afternoon buses will also be available for students who want transportation direct to Main Campus from Rice, but there will be no late bus (after 9pm) returning to the Rice Campus.

We know it’s sometimes hard to believe in the depths of a Chicago winter, but summer really will arrive in Chicago later this year. When summer comes, so do summer courses. There’s a PDF file online now of our summer courses at Course descriptions are in the Summer Bulletin, at . Check them out: we think you find something you’ll really like…

Just a reminder…Friday January 25 is the last day to drop a class for a full refund and to add a class without “issues”.

Transactions on Information Technology Research (TITR) is a peer-reviewed publication that covers substantive additions, insights and challenges to the theory and practice of programming, networking, information management, web systems, user-centered design and their integration. It provides academic and industry researchers a new refereed venue to present original research methods and findings to the IT community of scholars and practitioners. TITR’s focus is on technological developments affecting growth and change in enterprise IT infrastructure, systems integration and implementation. For their inaugural issue, they are seeking papers that will contribute to defining “IT research” by bringing, in addition to defining position papers, current empirical, methodological and theoretical investigations of IT artifacts, the deployment of IT systems, as well as end user experience to the IT community.

The editors and reviewers of TITR encourage IT faculty, practitioners and students to contribute original scholarship, including deeper investigations and fuller descriptions of research presented at conferences and symposia. In order to bring new research findings to their readers, TITR is committed to keeping the publication process (receipt, review, revision and publication) to a bi-annual cycle. The ITM program is strongly committed to student research and we encourage all of our students (and faculty) to take advantage of this new opportunity.
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