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Can CITI Help Fill
the State’s Software Skills Gap?
BNH interviewed Norman Gibbs, executive director of the Connecticut Information Technology Institute (CITI), located at the University of Connecticut campus in Stamford.
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Business New Haven
8/10/98
By: Clement L. Russo
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What is CITI and why was
it formed?
CITI is a UConn initiative. It was formed as a partnership between the University of Connecticut and Fairfield County industry, in cooperation with SACIA [the Business Council of Southwestern Connecticut] and the local community colleges. Though we have an open-ended charter, our primary mission is to address the information-technology needs of the area. We will offer degrees, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as certificates, not-for-credit programs and updates for technology professionals.
How do CITI programs differ from those offered through other colleges and universities?
CITI is unique in that it involves a strong internal partnership between the school of business at UConn, which includes the MIS department, and the school of engineering, which includes the computer science department. As a result, in addition to our established curriculum, we will offer some brand-new courses that will blend business and information technology. Right now we're thinking through whether these courses should be more business-centric or more computer science-centric.
What kinds of students are your programs designed for?
Our programs should appeal to a broad range of students. On one end will be students from the community colleges who will be coming to us to complete their bachelors degrees. On the other end will be those already in the workforce who are looking to add to what they know about information technology or need to update their professional education. This is a key CITI goal: to help keep people current in their field and give them opportunities to learn new technologies.
How can CITI help to fill the software skills gap in
Connecticut?
One of the ways we can help is by increasing the output of students in the state with degrees in computer science. And because IT specialists tend to prefer working for companies that invest in their education and training, our programs will help industry here to retain good technical people. Finally, what I'm hearing over and over again from companies is that they want CITI to provide a forum for the discussion of IT needs and for promoting this as an area for information technology. If we can become a kind of focus for these information technology activities, I think that will also help to fill the software skills gap.
What are CITI's plans for future?
One of our plans for this fall is to introduce a CITI certificate program, which will allow people with latent talent - or those who've stayed home to raise a family - to jump into the IT workforce and become productive technical workers in only a couple of semesters. We'll also announce shortly a partnership with Oracle to offer a certificate in Oracle database administration.
What do you see looking into
the more distant future?
I think that higher education is evolving rapidly toward new paradigms. And I hope that CITI will become an exemplar for how a state university can work together with industry, the public sector and community colleges and become a showpiece for what other states can do.
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