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The D’Youville Information Technology Program: An Interview with Dr. Anthony Basile
Please note: This article was written in March of 2004 and some program-specific details may no longer be accurate. Please refer to the Information Technology department web pages for current information.
In Fall 2002, D’Youville College introduced its new information technology program to meet the need for skilled professionals in this rapidly growing field. Designed as a “hands-on program focused on the application of computer technology in a business environment,” the program is directed by Dr. Anthony Basile. The program has an advisory board comprised of prominent IT professionals currently active in the business world which meets regularly with the students and faculty. While new jobs in the IT field are being created each year, IT program graduates will find opportunities in areas such as systems analysis, software development, E-commerce, and web design. The program also offers a five-year track combining a bachelor’s degree in IT with a master’s in international business.
We spoke with Dr. Basile about the IT program, its origins, goals, curriculum, and its emphasis on hands-on learning to prepare graduates for a wide variety of careers in business.
Q: What is information technology?
A: I’ll begin by telling you what it’s not. It’s not computer science. Computer science is very abstract—designing languages, abstract grammars, algorithms for computations, and a lot of other things related to theoretical sciences. When the business world discovered they needed computers, whom did they hire to do these things? Computer scientists were in the abstract world but these guys wanted something very practical. And that’s when information technology began. Departments continued to add more business-oriented courses to meet these needs. And so IT broke off from computer science. It’s an engineering of computers aimed at the business world. That’s where it began.
Q: So what has IT become?
A: IT has evolved into four different but overlapping areas. One is web design. Companies want presence on the web and need people to design their web page. This is the area involving features like shopping carts, which entail an entire level of programming behind the web page. Once you have a web page, someone has to make it available to the Internet. This basically means running a server. So here you have a second area—systems administration and network administration. The third and increasingly important area is called data warehousing. There’s just so much factual information out there. In bioinformatics, for example, there are so many molecules that have been studied by biologists and the results have been published, but the information is vast. People used to go into libraries and read journals but there are now huge databases all over the world—all different from one another. So people want to collect them all, but what they do is build interfaces to connect them. Whereas Google databases web pages, data warehousing databases data bases. So that’s another emphasis in our program and something the business world wants. And the fourth area is software development. The business world wants to develop software either for internal purposes or to sell as products.
Q: So in terms of the curriculum, are students getting an overview of the entire field, and then deciding at some point what they want to focus on?
A: The curriculum begins with programming. That’s the easy way to understand how computers work. By the second year, you start to learn about the architecture of the machine, how it’s designed internally and how the operating system works. Then we get into systems integration, which brings together a lot of disparate systems into some big global picture. There are a lot of areas of IT, but all begins with understanding how computers work.
Q: Sounds fascinating.
A: It is. One of the things we did this year was to design two CPUs from scratch. We got to the point where we had programs running on them and students could see how it was all designed from the point of transistors up. When the new technologies come into place you need the basic principles to be able to understand them. My job is to decide what those basics are. Designing the CPUs from scratch gave the students firsthand experience into the basics of computer function. This is knowledge which they can carry for a lifetime.
Q: Does any other school in the area offer this program?
A: Yes, but there are significant differences in the programs. IT is so broad that people don’t really know what it means. I like to define it as computer engineering for the business world. My philosophy is to teach the basics so that when the new technologies come in, our people will be at the forefront.
Q: How many students are currently enrolled in the program?
A: About ten. I expect about ten a year. Some students are transferring from other programs and some from other colleges. But many are coming in as freshmen.
Q: You have a joint program with the business school. What percentage of the students do you expect will go on for a master’s in international business?
A: I expect about a third. Since IT is computer engineering for the business world, a lot of people prefer to be in managerial positions and run projects. So the master’s in international business will give them more training in management.
Q: What is the purpose of your advisory board?
A: I think this is one thing that distinguishes our program. I’m an academic and I can become wrapped up in the abstract and forget about business. So we meet with our advisory board to review our curriculum. I get feedback and the students find out what’s happening in business and what jobs are out there. They are basically our connection—our gateway to the business world—so we don’t become isolated from what’s going on. When we review the curriculum, it’s based on what business people need. Usually we all get together for lunch and talk about all these issues. The board members tell the students what they’re doing in their businesses and what they can expect.
Q: Do you envision relationships being cultivated between the students and the board members in terms of internships and possible job opportunities?
A: Exactly, and not just with the board members but with people they know. We also have a formal internship program in place. One way to think of IT people is that they are the liaison between the technology and the average person. That’s why tech support is an excellent way to get into the field. IT people are like modern day scribes, making the new technology available to the public.
Q: Do you envision this as a dynamic curriculum where new courses will be offered to meet the needs of emerging technologies?
A: It’s already happening. For example, I’ve added the Linux operating system because I feel it’s sufficiently robust and important to the IT world and our students better know how to use it.
Q: What kind of equipment do your students work on?
A: We have two lab rooms. One room has 15 computers that the students work on. Each student has a computer they get to use all year long. There are all types of computers. We have Macs, a G-4, a G-5, IBM compatibles, and Dells. So we have a variety of hardware and a variety of operating systems for students to become familiar with. We have two main industrial-strength servers as well as a smaller server and a backup server. Then in our teardown lab we have lots of older computers that we take apart and put back together.
Q: So students are really learning by doing.
A: Yes, by either working on the hardware itself, or by simulating it. You can actually simulate many computers within a single computer in our lab. In fact, you can actually simulate an entire network! So we’re making maximum use of the hardware and giving students a great deal of hands-on learning.
