Getting technical
Stitch re-engineers MIS program into MIT with new tech elements
Management teams and technology departments may both operate in the same company, but their agendas can be worlds apart. Where the goals of management may decree a project must be completed yesterday and on budget, those on the tech side may insist on more time and more money. The result is a communication gap which can potentially leave a company gridlocked in terms of productivity.
In an effort to bridge that corporate divide, Cardinal Stritch University in Fox Point has re-engineered its Management Information Systems bachelor’s degree and certificate programs into a Management of Information Technology program.
The revised program combines the basic knowledge of technology systems with management skills and is designed to make for a well-rounded working professional.
"I think this is a unique package that people will have when they leave the university," says Gwen Rivkin, assistant dean of the College of Business and Management at Cardinal Stritch. "They’ll understand not only how to figure out a project in terms of the technology it takes, but also how much it costs and how to opine the financing and communicate the ideas to management."
A new curriculum
Cardinal Stritch has fine-tuned the former MIS program while adding courses for the new MIT program. Notable changes include:
– A course on computer architecture and maintaining PCs, in order that people can learn to troubleshoot their own equipment.
– A course on project management and team leadership.
– An updated course on legal and ethical issues focused on technology management, a change from a prior legal and ethics course that pertained strictly to business.
Credit-wise, the modified MIT program requires an additional two credits toward completion of a bachelor’s degree, bringing the total major credits to 54 from the previous 52. Overall credits needed for graduation, however, remain at 128.
And for those students who are unsure if MIT is the route they want to pursue, Rivkin notes that there is the obligatory Introduction to Management of Information Technology course. The class is a general orientation to the field and lets students know early in their studies the direction the program will take them.
Bringing on the change
Rivkin describes the changes in the program, which were devised last February, as a result of a synthesis of ideas from students, faculty and the business community. She points out that students in the old MIS program were frequently looking for more of a focus on the technological aspects of business, which were not a part of the original course structure.
Steve Belville, a master planner at Maynard Steel in Milwaukee as well as an instructor at Cardinal Stritch, says that the program offers a much-needed balance between business organizational issues and technological ones.
"I think the program was lean on the tech side," says Belville. "They started from a management science perspective when they began the original MIS program, and when they changed to MIT they did address some of the tech issues that may come up in these implementations, because you need to be at least familiar with the tech side of the business."
Belville, who teaches a course on operating systems, states that the new classes function on a practical level, dealing not only with technical issues but also with organizational ones that regularly occur in companies.
Belville explains, for example, that when most businesses use enterprise resource planning systems, or ERPs, which plan manufacturing based on customer orders, problems generally arise between the vast and flexible capabilities of the ERP systems and in how companies manage their own business processes.
"I would have to say that in classifying the types of problems that occur, in general, 80% are organizational and 20% are technical," says Belville, who adds that the range of the program at Cardinal Stritch is broad enough to prepare students to handle both types of issues.
Jim Guenther, the chair of Cardinal Strich’s Business Advisory Council, says that the changes were necessary for creating a broader view of the marketplace for all sides of the corporate environment.
"Consider a drug company. On the technical side, a chemist would like to develop a product for three years while the company itself wants to get the product out to market as soon as possible," says Guenther, who stresses the importance of finding a middle ground where the needs of both sides are addressed.
"It’s simply a matter of education," adds Guenther. "If we can teach the ability to learn to relate upward in a company, then you are going to have stronger professionals who can relate to each other on a daily basis."
