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vCIS Alumni

The following is up to date as of Spring 2008. If you are an Kent alumni and would like your information added to this page, please email the current MISA Presient.

Did you work at any jobs/internships during your time at Kent State?
I interned with Sherwin-Williams doing web development work.

What advice would you offer to current students?
Students should get involved in organizations such as MISA. I got my internship through MISA, which makes getting a first job very easy. Everyone I knew in college who had an internship during college had no problem getting their first job. With my experience I was able to have a job lined up before I graduated. Much of this is thanks to MISA.

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Job Description:
Responsible for strategic enablement of the business. Responsibilities consist of Operations (data center, networking, servers, help desk, pc support, security, telephones, and asset management) and Application Development (business operations systems, reporting, data warehousing, intranet, internet, and extranet). Also responsible for IT professional development.

Career Path:
Sr. Programmer Analyst, Development Analyst, Sr. Development Analyst – Pioneer-Standard Electronics (1995 –1998)
Senior Consultant – Compuware Corporation (1998 – 2000)
Vice President Product Marketing & Information Technology – Aprisa Inc., subsidiary of Pioneer-Standard Electronics (2002 – 2003)
Director Application Development – Agilysys Inc., formerly Pioneer-Standard Electronics (2003 – 2007)
Vice President & Chief Information Officer – DentalCare Partners (2007 – Present)

Did you work at any jobs/internships during your time at Kent State?
Yes, TRW Inc. Intern/Application Developer.

What advice would you offer to current students?
INTERN, INTERN, INTERN, NETWORK, NETWORK, NETWORK – I can trace every position back to my internship.

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Touch Fusion LLC - Creator & President
- Developed a full service Point of Sale system, including custom built hardware, abstract applications, and tiered network built upon webservices.
- All system design principles were built with speed and cost as a driving factor.
- Created corporation, logo, design and marketing concepts.
- Leveraged relationships in the Convenience Store industry to build a quick client list of over 200 and form a profitable company in 3 months.

Digital Media Freedom/Digital Rodeo LLC - Creator & Vice President
- Managed a several multi million dollar investment for the usage of salaries, supplies, and outsourced employees.
- Supervised a 20 person development and design team and a 20 person marketing team from conception to deployment while conforming to Microsoft's Best Practices.
- Packaged a variety of technological concepts into a fully functioning online country community supporting over 50,000 users. In development: speed, UI simplicity, and browser compatibility were all taken into consideration.
- Site supported by ASP.NET, AJAX, SQL, XML and Web Services.
- Created partnerships to bring Digital Rodeo into over 50 large sponsorship deals; primarily leveraged by doing industry trades.

What other jobs and companies have you worked at since graduating from school?
Rust Records Inc. - Director of Information Technology & New Media Services
- Efficiently managed a team of ten developers, four designers, and eight IT coordinators in various technical projects.
- Supervised and developed a digital distribution framework to be used in a multi-million dollar website.
- Designed and created dynamic ASP.NET websites with the ability to be administrated by users with no computer experience. Integrating VB.NET, CSS, XML, and SQL together into a finished product.
- Use innovative development and online marketing tactics to bring several developing artists into the foreground of country music.
- Created several management tools used by IT coordinators to effectively manage and coordinate over 15,000 street team members.

Did you work at any jobs/internships during your time at Kent State?
Yes, I found that internships are the secret to success. If managed inefficiently, it can make it be difficult to have class, friends, and an internships. The best approach that I've seen is to take classes Tuesday and Thursday and work the internship Monday, Wednesday, Friday. It makes for a hectic semester but works great.

Internships
FirstEnergy Solutions - Portfolio Readiness/Forecasting Co-Op
- Managed a complex neural network to forecast energy load for thousands of energy users.
- Developed several reports to reduce overhead and effectively tweak the neural network for special events, intense weather, and holidays.
- Created a coal management system using VB6 and Access that predicts decide the appropriate coal workload utilizing records from the past forty years.
- Developed several automation tools for Microsoft Excel to be used by energy traders within the department.

Philips Medical Systems - Computed Tomography Intern
- Developed a conceptual application to navigate and display problematic lung nodules in a unique user interface, which was presented in front of 60,000 participants at an RSNA exhibit in Aurora, IL.
- Improved upon current CT x-ray programs and image processing algorithms using C++ and C#.NET.
- Created several "calculation systems" for use by doctors to simplify difficult decisions based on point systems and risk levels.
- Responsible for researching PACS systems and its migration into our development center.

The Sherwin-Williams Company - Web Developer, Business Analyst: Co- Op
- Analyzed customers' needs and made adjustments to previous CRM software using JSP and VB.NET.
- Created help tutorials in Flash MX2004 and Captivate, to show the user the functionality of several applications.
- Developed and maintained a software change management application to used by technical support specialists within Sherwin-Williams.

What advice would you offer to current students?
In school, the number one thing that helped me excel as an IT professional was taking what was learned in class and pushing it one step further. Use the knowledge in found class and DO IT in the outside world.
- Simply knowing a definition will not help you in the real world. Always pursue internships, find as many and the most diverse ones that force you to think.
- One of the things that I've found most important and I take it to heart. It was learned in my first Systems Analysis class at Kent. "Do not just learn technology or focus on mastering one programming language, markets change and so do needs. Instead, as an IT professional, challenge yourself to learn as much as you can on as many different technologies as possible. A broad understand will take you further."

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Background
Jason in currently a senior with a major in CIS and a minor in Accounting. He expects to gradate in December of 2007. He joined MISA in January 2006 and has been an officer since Fall semester 2006. Jason is interested in many different areas of technology and hopes to one day work in a computer security field.

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Job Description:
I do a lot of custom database programming (Oracle based) and also support our RFID technology.

Did you work at any jobs/internships during your time at Kent State?
Finance Intern for Summa Health Systems / SummaCare
Audit Intern for Geauga Lake
Plant Systems (IS developer) for The J.M. Smucker Company

What advice would you offer to current students?
Learn everything you can about databases and SQL. They are extremely valuable in the business world.

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Job Description:
I'm rotating around IT, looking for a career path.

Did you work at any jobs/internships during your time at Kent State?
Goodyear

What advice would you offer to current students?
Get into an IT internship as soon as possible so that you can get up to speed on what is interesting to business about IT. If you're in CIS, read up on ITIL and Business Analysis. ACM is a great organization to get involved in. acm.org, with a membership, is a huge resource for just about anything you want to know about IT.

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Job Description:

• Lead or participate in the development of software systems
• Develop and/or maintain operational documentation for new programs as well as modifications to existing programs
• Maintain vision for product enhancements and provide appropriate recommendations
• Take ownership of problems and deal with them effectively to ensure resolution
• Liaise with appropriate staff to analyze and debug system failure
• Participate in in-house testing of newly developed software
• Maintain software through review and modification of existing code
• Support the Sales Department in product demonstrations, preparation of data and product knowledge

Did you work at any jobs/internships during your time at Kent State?
No, I concentrated on coursework.

What advice would you offer to current students?
Get involved in other organizations like Beta Alpha Psi (Accounting AND Information Systems). Work with you professors not against them - you never know if they have been asked by an employer for names of student that work well and are looking for employment.

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Job Description:
Erika Sheeler is a Manager in the Technology Risk practice of Protiviti and is based in the Cleveland, Ohio office. Her past experiences have focused on SAP security reviews consisting of sensitive access and segregation of duties analysis and monitoring, SAP configurable controls reviews, performing General IT audits, IT Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) testing, SAP implementations for global corporations, and IT desktop and helpdesk support.

Career Path:
IT Analyst; Accenture LLP Cleveland, OH (approx. 2 years)

Technology Risk Manager; Protiviti Inc. (Senior Consultant 2 years, Manager 2 years to current – 4 years total)

 

Did you work at any jobs/internships during your time at Kent State?
Yes, Microtechnician (hardware and desktop support); Jo-Ann Stores, Inc. Hudson, OH; (10 week internship program, plus 6 months part-time)

ADVICE: As you begin your job search, work to gain a thorough understanding of the many different types of IT jobs in the marketplace and try to visualize yourself working in those positions before you apply. Ask yourself many questions to determine if the open position would be a good fit for you: do you want to travel, do you want to eventually lead and manage other people, do you want to work with networks or databases, do you want to be a programmer, etc. The CIS degree will prepare you for many careers, and although you don't need to know your exact future career path when you graduate, you should have a high-level understanding of what the different paths are so that you can articulate your areas of interests to your future employers. At the end of the day, work is still work and it will and should always be challenging. If you can find the area that interests you most, it will make you a more valuable employee if you are engaged and focused in your daily work as your drive and initiative will contribute to the overall success of the organization