The MS. In MSIS
Over the years, a large percentage of the IS graduates have been women. Many of them now enjoy leadership positions in the corporate world. There is a huge potential for women to succeed as Information Systems experts. The IS Program targets areas that are especially appropriate for women’s interests in the workplace; it is dedicated to helping women gain the skills the market wants. The flexibility of the program enables women to customize their education in ways that both fit their needs, allowing them to develop the specialty of their choice, and prepare for market demand.
To expand the number of women in our program, we have designed the program with women’s issues in mind. We offer a support system with clear lines of communication to the administration; a social community dedicated to women’s issues; networking with women alums of IS as well as other women’s groups on campus; help in finding scholarships and other funds; assistance in securing quality coop jobs that suit women’s needs; references to help prepare women for full-time jobs; and the opportunity to work with potential employers who are equally committed to reaching out to women.
We envision all of our students—men and women—in a variety of professional roles such as: functional engineers and architects, where the focus is on utility and usability engineering, articulating and communicating requirements, and managing client expectations, business analysts, where the focus is on communicating requirements and managing expectations; project managers, where the emphasis is coordinating software projects; business design and process architects, who formalize business needs and desires into formats that are ready for implementation; data architects, who take responsibility for managing the most valuable assets in a company (its data); and IT managers, who supervise IT operations throughout the enterprise.
Men and women who favor information design and engineering activities will be happy to know that the IS teaches breakthrough approaches to software design and development. The IS Program philosophy highlights the overall system, its component parts, including policies and procedures, and the users and utilities of the system. We equip men and women engineers with methods and tools that enable them systematically and deliberately to engage in software projects management.