About our program
Our Information Technology Program was developed to give students from all majors sufficient depth of training in Information Technology to become the next-generation drivers of our knowledge-based economy. These students will comprise the innovators, managers, users, and consumers of information technology in Massachusetts, so we must reach out to a broad spectrum of students.
Our approach is to encouage students to major in a field they are passionate about, and then supplement that with an IT Minor. The framework of the IT Minor ensures that students have technical training, understand the human dimensions of IT, and understand how IT impacts, or might impact, their fields. Within this framework, students can choose from a set of 55 courses (and growing) the six courses that are most relevant to them.
We've been at this for two years now, and are continually impressed by the students that draw from the resouces at this great university to contruct a cohesive IT Minor, and then careers that nicely integrate IT and their majors. Some of our students end up in the IT track, but many others seek to excel in their chosen fields with an IT skill set and conceptual understanding that sets them apart.
We are also pleased with the appeal of our program to a broad mix of students. In spite of mostly passive, word-of-mouth promotion of our startup period, we have enrolled students from a full array of majors. The representation of underrepresented minorities in our program exceeds the percentages that exist in our campus population. Our enrollment of women is at 42%, not where we'd like to be, but much better than other technology programs on campus. And our general enrollment is growing—this fall up 86% over last fall—at a time when computing-related majors are seeing enrollment drop. last. Promotional efforts to be launched this spring should improve these already promising numbers.
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Internships and Recruitment
If your business has a need for students that can integrate IT with another field, either for internships or permanent employment, please contact us to learn more. Additionally, if you have employees that might be appropriate and available as role models (to be profiled on this website) or mentors (to support multidisciplinary student teams working on community-based IT projects), please let us know. Thanks.
Advisory and Advocacy Partners
UMass Amherst, and Massachusetts, are leaders nationally in cross-campus integration of IT, know as "IT Across the Curriculum" or ITAC. Our program, and others like ours in the state, got started through funding from CITI, the Commonwealth Information Technology Initiative, a public-private partnership launched in 2000. Only through relationships with Massachusetts industry can we develop the IT-fluent workforce that is needed to compete in the knowledge-based industries important to Massachusetts' economic future. If you would like to partner with us to advocate for funding, shape our priorities, or partner in any ways, please contact us at the UMass Amherst IT Program or the statewide CITI. Thank you.
IT Capstone
One of the most exciting projects underway in our IT Program is the development of a two-semester capstone course for seniors. Beginning Fall 2005, this course will provide a culminating experience for IT Minors to work together in multidisciplinary teams to tackle IT needs in the community. The course will require students to work together, drawing on the IT Minor preparation they share and the depth in their major fields that they bring to the teams as individuals. Woven into this project-based course will be curriculum on needs assessment, project management, team building, ethics, privacy, reflective and formal writing, and the like—all in a community service learning framework.
While this course is still in its planning phase, there will be opportunities for businesses to support these top students in their work. If you are interested in learning more, please contact us.
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