Today, I got a sneak peak into the newest IT-oLogy branch – IT-oLogy @ University Center of Greenville. Lindsey Stork took a few minutes to show me around her digs, which are located in the heart of the library next to the really cool SimHub. Want to know what the SimHub is? Check it out!
Without further ado, meet Lindsey Stork, Campus Relations Manager, as she shows you around IT-oLogy@UCG!
I know…I’ve been a little MIA from this blog for a while, and I do apologize! Where have I been you ask? ALL OVER!
Here’s a recap of all that’s been going on.
New branch!
So excited to have keys to our new branch - IT-oLogy @ University Center of Greenville!
THAT’S RIGHT! We’ve got a new branch! I have a home now! SUPER EXCITED and just waiting on visitors. The University Center of Greenville is going to be a great place for us to build our Upstate connections. Keep an eye out for exciting events that will be coming up.
Campus career fairs
This semester I’ve traveled to five different career fairs. I’m finding it more and more interesting that students want to apply online and don’t have a copy of their resume on hand. ATTENTION JOB SEEKERS! BRING YOUR RESUME WITH YOU TO A JOB INTERVIEW! How else is an employer going to remember your experience?
NEXT Generation IT Internship Program
It’s that time of year again! Are you looking for an internship for the summer? Looking to hire an intern for the summer? Then the IT Gateway is the place to go! Here, job seekers can view/apply for jobs and employers can post jobs and events. Why get an internship? SO MANY REASONS! The number one reason is the most obvious, EXPERIENCE! Real world experience really does set you apart from other job seekers. Get out there today and find your summer internship…it’s a decision you won’t regret!
It’s a sign of progress. Friday, the Tower at 1301 Gervais — a landmark in the Columbia skyline – gets a new look with IT-oLogy @ Innovista.
The installation of the IT-oLogy @ Innovista signage exemplifies the already successful partnership between IT-oLogy and Innovista to foster the development, growth and relocation of information technology (IT) companies, small and large.
“This marks the fruition of one of our original visions: a district with the strategic clustering of IT companies in one locality,” said Don Herriott, Director of Innovista Partnerships. “More companies are seeing the advantages of co-location, and IT-oLogy @ Innovista now houses 9 IT companies and counting.”
IT-oLogy’s mission is to promote, teach and grow the IT talent pipeline and profession. With Innovista’s mission of creating, attracting and growing knowledge-based companies in the Midlands of South Carolina, the two constitute a perfect partnership for recruiting to the new IT-oLogy @ Innovista building. Clustering IT companies in a single location, such as the Tower at 1301 Gervais Street, can open the door for new opportunities for partnership and business development, stimulate new ideas and industry innovation and help in the recruitment of new companies to the region.
“Our goal is to bring the IT community together in a collaborative environment to develop the IT pipeline through programs at all levels,” said Lonnie Emard, Executive Director of IT-oLogy. “The partnership with Innovista is a perfect example of this collaborative effort because we are bringing together people and companies that are dedicated to both of our missions.”
The establishment of an IT district is not about a sign at the top of the Tower at 1301 Gervais Street. While that is a visible representation of the partnership, the real story is about what happens both in and out of the building. The uniqueness of IT-oLogy is that it is not a single company or entity; instead, it is a non-profit collaboration of companies, academic institutions and organizations uniting to address the nationwide shortage of skilled IT professionals. To address this challenge, IT-oLogy offers K-12 programs where students explore numerous IT career options, the internships for undergraduate students and the continuing education opportunities that keep professionals constantly learning and up-to-date. When all this happens, the result is a vibrant economic picture, which is the goal of Innovista.
The confluence of opportunities in IT-oLogy @ Innovista will provide a home in the community for local talent as well. “At the University of South Carolina, our responsibility to students and alumni extends beyond education. It includes a commitment to helping them find jobs, good jobs, when they graduate,” said Dr. Harris Pastides, President of the University of South Carolina. “The pairing of IT-oLogy and Innovista is perfect because of their complementary missions, each focused on growing our innovation economy in this region and across South Carolina.”
“From the outset, the vision of IT-oLogy has been to have business and academic partners collaborate to advance IT talent,” Emard said. “The lack of IT talent is a national epidemic that is solved in a local manner. The establishment of IT-oLogy @ Innovista is a visible representation of bringing companies together to collaborate and partner, fostering new ideas and technologies.”
Recently, IT-oLogy announced the establishment of the branch IT-oLogy @ University Center of Greenville, located in Greenville, South Carolina. This is yet another way IT-oLogy is working locally to address a national issue. In the future, IT-oLogy will continue to open branches across the nation as a way to advance IT talent in a grassroots manner.
Innovista is a strategic economic development effort that is connecting the University of South Carolina and university-spawned innovations with entrepreneurs, businesses and stakeholders. Its purpose is to help attract and create technology-intensive, knowledge-based companies, which result in higher-paying jobs and raise the standard of living in South Carolina.
For more information about Innovista, visit www.innovista.sc.edu or contact Lauren Edwards at 803.777.8786 or Laurene@mailbox.sc.edu.
IT-oLogy is a non-profit collaboration of businesses, academic institutions and other organizations dedicated to growing the IT talent pipeline and advancing the IT profession. IT-oLogy does this through three major initiatives: Promote IT (K-12 schools), Teach IT (Higher Education) and Grow IT (Professionals and Businesses).
For more information about IT-oLogy, visit www.it-ology.org or contact Powers Strickland at 803.354.5735 or powers.strickland@it-ology.org.
The Palmetto Open Source Software Conference (POSSCON), presented by IT-oLogy, will bring together the biggest names and companies in the information technology (IT) industry to discuss the latest issues for developers, executives, government leaders and educators. World-class speakers like Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and one of the most influential people in the history of technology, will be featured along with many others.
Top companies like Twitter, Red Hat, IBM, Oracle, HP, Google, Homeland Security, Apache, Rackspace, EMC and FireHost will also attend and participate.
POSSCON will be held at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center March 28-29, and will feature track sessions, hands-on training and social and networking events. Tracks will include Education, Technical, Big Picture and Demo/Training.
Other speakers include Dr. Douglas Maughan, Director, Department of Homeland Security, Cyber Security Division; Jim Jagielski, Co-Founder and President, Apache Software Foundation; Chris Aniszcyck, Open Source Manager, Twitter, Inc.; and many others.
Started in 2008, POSSCON is an annual gathering of industry experts, thought leaders, IT decision makers, software programmers and educators around the topic of open source. The conference has steadily grown since it began, and in 2011 approximately 500 people from 24 states attended, 30 colleges and universities and more than 100 private and government organizations were represented. Open source is a philosophy and methodology based on making source code available and redistributable.
Major sponsors include IBM, IT-oLogy, OpenStack, Verizon Wireless, BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina and the City of Columbia. Others include Canonical, Chipco Computer Distributors, Inc., FireHost, GitHub, Google, Health Sciences South Carolina, Hewlett Packard Company, Linode, OpenSource.com, Oracle, Percona, Inc., Rackspace Hosting, Red Hat, SkySQL, SPARC, SUSE and TM Floyd & Company.
Developers, executives, government leaders and educators will all benefit from attending POSSCON. Registration is available at www.posscon.org.
IT-oLogy held its first Cyber Saturday event on February 25, 2012. With middle school students and a few parents in attendance, topics such as information technology, IT careers, cyber safety, IT logos and IBM’s super computer, Watson, were covered in IT-oLogy’s high-tech theater. It was a great turnout and we are really excited about having more students participate in our next Cyber Saturday event on March 31st. This Cyber Saturday should be an exciting one, incorporating more hands-on activities and a variety of topics covering the IT spectrum. Registration will be open soon!
We are also looking for businesses that are interested in contributing promotional materials for goodie bags. If you have some cool promotional materials that middle schoolers might like, please contact Alicia Thibaudet at Alicia.thibaudet@it-ology.org
Are you planning to spend money on professional development and training opportunities this year? If so, we are excited to share an opportunity with you. New Horizons is a large supporter of IT-oLogy and the programs we run to meet our mission of advancing IT talent. New Horizons is an independent IT training company, offering a full range of technology and business skills training from basic application and desktop productivity tools to complex IT systems.
New Horizons has pledged to donate a minimum of $25,000 to IT-oLogy through vouchers for their training opportunities!
We need your help to receive the $25,000+ donation! How? Simple! Check out the training offered by New Horizons and if there’s something you’re interested in, register and let them know you’d like to use the IT-oLogy voucher. Your company pays New Horizons for the training as you normally would, and they will then donate the dollar amount of your training ($25,000+) to IT-oLogy.
Why is this important? The $25,000+ contribution from New Horizons will go towards program funding that will be kicking off over the next few months, including camps for high school students, our Student as Professional program, the IT Gateway and Next Generation IT Internship Program for undergraduate and graduate students and conferences and workshops for professionals.
If you’re planning on training this year, please consider taking a look at New Horizon’s offerings and see if this year you can not only help your staff’s skillsets, but also help IT-oLogy!
Do you have questions? Contact Karl McCollester at karl.mccollester@it-ology.org for more information!
Hey Middle School Students!
Guess what? We have a program JUST FOR YOU! Join us this Saturday for our Cyber Saturday Kick-Off! We’ll be hosting Cyber Saturday EVERY month! Be on the look-out for more dates! Registration is available now!
The Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of South Carolina will offer in summer 2012 an institute in Computer Science for prospective teachers of AP* Computer Science A.
The plan is for the on-campus part of the institute to be held from 18 June through 22 June 2012. Some preparatory work will be required in the two weeks prior to the week on campus, and some work will be submitted in the week following the week on campus.
This course will qualify for USC graduate credit from the College of Education as EDSE 773 provided that the appropriate (and independent) process, including payment of the application fee, is done with the Graduate School of the University of South Carolina. Potential institute participants must apply on their own to the Graduate School, pay application fees, submit credentials, etc., in order to obtain the graduate credit for this course.
Funding from the state Department of Education will cover the USC tuition contract for EDSE 773 from the College of Education as well as the instructional materials for the course (the AP “bundle”). Participants will be expected to pay a $150 fee for this institute. Participants must pay for their own housing and meals during the week on campus, although we expect to be able to arrange for on-campus housing for out-of-town participants. These, together with the USC graduate application fee (if necessary, for those not already enrolled as USC graduate students), should be the only out-of-pocket expenses for participants.
The programming language used in AP CS is Java. The USC Department of Computer Science and Engineering uses Eclipse as the development environment, although it is possible that a different development environment will be chosen for this institute. Java is available as a free download by itself, or can be obtained bundled in with the free download of Eclipse . If a different development environment will be used, it will also be a free download.
Institute participants are expected to have some familiarity with computer programming; it is not possible to compress all the needed Java instruction and the pedagogical instruction into the short time allowed. The preliminary work will involve download and testing of simple Java programs, and participants will need to have access to computers prior to and after the week on campus at USC. Instruction at USC will take place in a computer lab, but the use of personal laptops is also possible. Some support in getting downloads installed will be available prior to the week on campus.
Further information can be obtained from contacting Duncan Buell, Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, contact information found at Dr. Buell’s home page.
Those teachers who are not already USC graduate students should contact the USC College of Education and the USC Graduate School for information about applying for admission as a graduate student to USC; this status will be necessary to obtain credit for EDSE 773.
To register, please fill out RegistrationForm.
*College Board, AP, Advanced Placement Program, APVertical Teams, Pre-AP, and the acorn logo are registered trademarks of the College Board. Used with permission.
We are excited to announce the newest branch – IT-oLogy @ University Center of Greenville! Check out the press release that went out yesterday!
The University Center of Greenville, Inc. (UCG) provides a central cost-effective location for the delivery of higher education baccalaureate, masters, and doctoral programs from many of South Carolina’s largest Universities benefiting the citizens and the economic community of Greater Greenville. In addition to 76 degree programs offered from its seven institutional members, UCG is also home to a number of other educationally-related organizations and programs, including Public Education Partners Greenville County, ELS Language Centers and the SimHub™ immersive technology center.
The multi-organizational hub, located inside McAlister Square, provides collaborative space and shared resources, all with the end goal of improving educational access for the Upstate community. The latest organization to call the University Center of Greenville ‘home’ is IT-oLogy.
IT-oLogy is a nonprofit collaboration of businesses, academic institutions and organizations dedicated to growing the Information Technology (IT) talent pipeline and advancing the IT profession. Formed in 2008 as a collaboration between the University of South Carolina, IBM and BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina to respond to the IT talent gap, the organization’s mission is to change the face of the IT field.
UCG President & COO David A. Taylor says, “We are very happy to welcome the IT-oLogy organization and staff to the University Center of Greenville as they work to expand their presence and activities in the Greater Greenville area….this is a great opportunity for the Center to collaborate with another partner with strong focus on connecting with leading Universities and employers for the benefit of the citizens and economic community of Greater Greenville.”
IT-oLogy focuses on a broad range of goals from exposing K-12 students to the various career possibilities in the IT field, to advancing professional development opportunities. Key programs are aligned around three simple initiatives: Promote It, Teach It, Grow It.
”IT-oLogy believes that a classroom to the boardroom model is the most effective approach to advancing IT talent,” says Lonnie Emard, Executive Director of IT-oLogy. “Our programs span all ages – from students in K-12 schools, to undergraduates enrolled in higher education institutions to entry-level and seasoned IT professionals.”
The organization’s presence at the University Center will bring networking and experiential learning opportunities to current students in or interested in IT degree programs, such as USC Upstate’s Bachelor of Arts in Information Management & Systems hosted onsite at UCG, as well as professional development opportunities for employees at local IT-heavy companies like Fluor Corporation.
Middle and high School students considering areas of study pre-college can use IT-oLogy to explore potential degrees and careers through camps or virtual job shadows directing them into fields such as website development, multimedia design, computer systems networking, and much more.
“From the outset, the vision of IT-oLogy has been to have business and academic partners collaborate to advance IT talent,” Emard says. “The lack of IT talent is a national epidemic that is solved in a local manner. The IT-oLogy @ University Center of Greenville branch becomes a visible, physical representation of business, higher ed and K-12 education working together to meet a common goal.”
For more information about IT-oLogy and its programs, visit www.it-ology.org. To learn more about the University Center and the Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degrees available locally, visit www.ucgreenville.org.
Last night, IT-oLogy hosted the first Codeyear meet-up in Columbia, SC. Did you know that our meet-up was the 13th largest meet-up in the WORLD?!? How awesome is that! We had a room full of developers and developers in training, coming together for an hour of questions, advice and where to go next discussions. It was really neat to have a group of people who had never met, come together for one common reason: to learn to code. We had teachers, professionals, students and those just interested in learning more (like me). It was a great turnout and I’m really excited to get through the next few weeks’ lessons and attend the second meet-up. At next month’s meet-up, we are going to try to connect with Greenville and Charleston using our distance learning capabilities! We are also looking at splitting into groups based on how far people have gotten in the lessons and how advanced people are to ask our volunteer developers specific questions.
We are also looking for sponsors for the food and beverages for the meet-ups! Are you or your business interested in buying pizza and drinks for all of us learning to code? Let Karl McCollester know at karl.mccollester@it-ology.org.
Check out the blog post Karl wrote following last night’s meet-up!
