The IT Executive Exchange (ITEE) is a forum for IT Executives and College of Business Administration professors at The University of Akron. Meetings take place every six to eight weeks to discuss pressing and leading edge issues.

The purpose of this forum is to have a healthy exchange of ideas that will be useful to all attendees. It is sponsored by the Center for Information Technologies and eBusiness (CITe) of the University of Akron’s College of Business Administration.

Come join us at the next IT Executive Exchange Meeting

Title: Computing Education in the CBA and the University of Akron: Have we entered the 21st Century?

Date: Friday, November 30, 2018

Location: CBA 258 (Murphy Room), The University of Akron, Akron, OH

Time: 2:00 pm to 2:30 pm - Networking; 2:30 pm to 4:30 pm - Discussions

Sponsor: Center for IT & eBusiness (CITe)

Topic Description:

On September, 2018, Interim President John Green of the University of Akron introduced a proposal for discussion that would take the educational units for computer engineering (College of Engineering), Computer Science (Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences), Information Systems Management (MIS) (College of Business Administration), and Computer Information Systems (infrastructure, cybersecurity) (College of Applied Science and Technology, the former Summit Community College) – and put them under one roof. Some of the advantages that could accrue include improving brand clarity, helping students find the right major for them (this improving throughput speed, retention, and graduation), and synergies/economies of scale. Green mentioned several conversations with business leaders in IT, such as yourselves, in which a message was conveyed that computing education needs to be reimagined and reformed in the face of rapid technological change. Our responses to this proposal are due by Feb. 1, meaning that the ITEE is an ideal forum to discuss the merits of the proposal and to hear your thoughts about how computing education should be organized.

The question of how we should prepare students for the rapidly changing world of computing is complex and multifaceted. On the one hand, we worry about content ("hard skills") issues - do students hit the ground running with the right basket of skills and knowledge of needed systems, or do they have to be retrained? Everyone agrees that “soft skills” are even more important than before, but how can we take time to instill them when the "content" plate keeps getting bigger and bigger? Meanwhile, we face "process" questions: is a boot camp model better than a semester model for some elements of training; how should online education be incorporated; how can new models be grafted onto dedicated, irreplaceable infrastructure (such as tenured professors and classrooms)? To what extent might corporations provide resources and help that was unavailable before? Although we have discussed these issues at ITEE several times in the past, they have taken on greater urgency now.

Parking permits will be emailed at a later date. Please feel free to share this email with your colleagues who may be interested in this topic.

If you are interested in attending the meeting, please register through the RSVP link.