Maxed Out
Because the System i can run at redline speed all day long . . .
May 3, 2007
IBM Reinvigorates Academic Initiative
The IBM System i Academic Initiative is picking up steam these days, which is very good news. Related programs at IBM a couple of years ago were cooling off — along with the economy in the United States — and the System i world was losing schools, student participation, and i-related jobs all at the same time.
We met with Linda Grigoleit, IBM's System i education program director, and Elaine Lennox, IBM's vice president of System i marketing, at COMMON to discuss the recent momentum.
"We increased our investment levels right when we were announcing the Initiative for Innovation . . . back to three years ago," Lennox notes. "Since then we have invested a lot of money and time into getting up-to-date curriculum into the universities and colleges and at this point, our latest count is that we have 20,000-plus students learning System i skills today, in 25 countries."
Academic Ecosystems
IBM is now much more collaborative with curriculum design, and has been working directly with schools and area business partners to develop the kinds of coursework the area employers need most. In addition, IBM says System i "communities" are supporting the schools in the form of guest lecturers and real-world projects for students to work on.
The primary goal is to create academic networks or ecosystems throughout the world that provide end-to-end education and jobs.
"We have enough students coming out of these programs that we can solve the skills gap in the marketplace, but now it's a question of how do you connect a with b, skilled students with employers, how do we make this work?" Lennox says. "So we've implemented what we call Academic Networks. The concept is you take a local college and you bring in a set of partners, a set of clients, and you develop a local ecosystem, a teaming agreement locally, to get jobs created for these students."
And jobs is the key. Smaller colleges, particularly tech colleges, are keenly interested in being able to place their students in jobs, and it's a vicious circle that's hard to break whenever it goes awry — no jobs, no students, no students, no jobs.
"The schools, when they hear jobs, and they see them in their local community, they are much more interested in teaching System i in their education," Grigoleit notes.
I am very pleased to see these changes, and I'm particularly happy to see that IBM's System i group recognizes that jobs and education are a critical component — worthy of investment — of System i success. This is an area of marketing that's not as instantly visible as Super Bowl television ads, but it's supremely more effective toward the long-term health of the entire i ecosystem.
A Few More Details
IBM is also helping organize System i Career Days and is launching iSummits that bring universities together with IBM, local System i clients and business partners to discuss skill requirements and university curriculum in a roundtable format.
For example, IBM held an iSummit at Gateway Technical College in Kenosha, Wisconsin in April. More than 35 people from IBM, the college, the local System i users group and nearby businesses like Superior Carrier discussed which skills are most in demand in the community and how to connect students with local companies ready to hire.
IBM says other recent iSummits occurred at schools including the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, Fairleigh Dickinson University, and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Other iSummits in the future will include roundtables at Mt. San Antonio College, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the IT University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Also of note, the higher education programs in Europe, for example, are often more closely tied to governments that have a hand in curriculum development.
For example, in the UK, IBM recently nailed down an agreement where the UK is developing a curriculum that it will then deploy this fall in about three dozen new schools in one fell swoop.
Posted by cmaxcer at May 3, 2007 9:43 AM
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