Information technology, a booming career now and into the future

Black Collegian, Oct 1999 by Bruce, Calvin

Information Technology has influenced society in another important way: how we communicate in and out of the office. Do you need to retrieve your e-mails received at work on your cellular phone while you're at the beach? No problem. What about printing a fax in your "dashboard office" that's been transmitted to your palm computer while you're dodging freeway traffic? It's a snap. Do you need to transcribe something to your home computer while you wait for dessert in a fancy restaurant? With your handy-dandy cell phone, it's easier than you could imagine-thanks to the miracle of digital and voice-recognition technologies. Want to add a little music to your cache of digitized information? Using MP3 (a computer file format for audio), you can download your favorite music from the Internet, post it on another Web site, send it via e-mail, or store it to your hard drive. All while you're preparing for a hot Saturday night date!

Who makes all this possible? For college students with a technical aptitude, how can they tap into this revolution of communication and information processing?

Designing and Delivering the Technology

To be more specific, "Information Technology" is an umbrella term for the interrelation of numerous scientific and information-processing fields, along with corresponding areas of practical application. From a career standpoint, professionals who design and deliver Information Te-chnology encompass a vast array of highly-skilled specialists. Their academic backgrounds include: computer science, applications engineering, telecommunications, electrical engineering, Web site design, computer graphics, network administration, etc.

Most professionals working in Information Technology have a fouryear degree, but some have an associate or technical-school degree (with appropriate work experience). Their actual job titles vary as much as the functions they perform. Standard job titles include: Database Analyst, Database Administrator, Systems Programmer, PC Support Specialist, Software Engineer, Systems Analyst, Web Developer, Client/Server Developer, Network (LAN/WAN) Administrator, Technical Writer, Information Technology Consultant, Computer Business Analyst, and so on.

What is most important to consider is the fact that IT drives all segments of our economy and impacts every profession-technical as well as nontechnical. For this reason, knowledge of rr is perhaps the key skill for job enhancement in the new millennium. Even students who have majored in other disciplines are well advised to include in their academic repertoire some coursework in Information Technology.

"The use of, access to and comprehension of data and information is vitally critical to success in the business world today," says John Hannabach. "It is not the domain of the so-called high tech companies, like Intel, Motorola or IBM. It is the domain of all business and industry worldwide. For that reason, today's successful graduates should be comfortable using computers, the Internet and Web access as a way-of-life. "