Closing Semester

Well it seems that it has been awhile sense I have updated so let's review what has been going on.

Since last post we had our Spring Break which was a completely crazy week around here. As any of you will find out being in northwest Arkansas and Northeast Oklahoma the weather is crazy. On the Friday that started Spring Break it was 70 degrees outside, by Noon on Saturday it had snowed 8 inches, by Noon on Sunday it was starting to melt, by Monday morning I was on the sidewalk shoveling snow in flip-flops and shorts....

The weather was nasty but it did allow me some time to work on my projects for classes that I needed to touch up on. One of the greatest things about the UA MIS program is the large use of group projects that aren't simple "answer these 5 questions" type assignments but full blown project systems. In my first semester during the Database Management class each group was to design a fully functional hospital administration and patient tracking system. We spent about 8 weeks purely on coding this project while testing and building the system documentation as well. At the end of the semester we came out with a functioning VB.NET application that worked as it should and incorporated all the needs of the business requirements.

The structure of the projects are not only to include the technical side of things but to also bring in the business and teamwork aspect of it as well. My group consisted of 3 members and was seperated into a Project Leader (Myself), a Documentation Designer, and a Secondary Programmer/Presentation Designer. With the roles split up we were able to break down the project into pieces, create a scheduled timeline, and watch the project complete step by step. We were able to budget our time using online tools like www.teamviewer.com to allow each of us to work at home while still staying connected to the rest of the team.

This semester is alittle more hectic than the last. For our IT Management class our project for the semester is to create a complete prototype of a new system for an actual process at a company. Our goal is to have a complete Business Reengineering project that has drastic positive effects for an actual company. This semester my group chose to do a local dog breeding company and has seen a whole different atmosphere when dealing with a start-up company compared to large corporations as most projects are based.

Last Week the UA also held "IT Day" for local highschools to let students see the possibilities of the University and the types of jobs that are in the field right now. Most of the Full-Time MIS students volunteered to help escort the students as well as work the booths to help out the department. The great thing about the atmosphere at UA is that the Professors and other Students are always around and on campus. This gives you a chance to really get to know others that will be in your field as well as build great networking opportunities with students that graduate and move to local companies in the area. Many students tend to forget the need for networking especially in the later years of college, the University helps set up face-to-face meetings with local companies to aide in the networking of the students.

Spring Break!

Well it has finally came upon me to spend some free time during Spring Break....well I thought that was the case anyway...

One of the strengths of the MIS program is the large use of group projects to get the full systems development life cycle really burned into the minds of the students. This semester I am taking the Management of IT class that has a project based on Business Process Reengineering. The project that my group is working on is an online interface for a local small dog breeding company that deals with business nationwide. Unfortunately that means that I get to spend my Spring Break doing PHP code to develop the backend for the system. I know this may sound boring to some but honestly for myself I see it as a puzzle and will probably entertain me over the break.

The department hosted a lunch for the Full-Time MIS students this past week to talk about graduation as well as internship possibilities. This year there are many great internships for the students from chose from to help build their resumes as well as gain needed experience. I can personally say that I have learned more in the past 6 months at Colgate-Palmolive working hands on with SAP projects than I could ever hope to get during regular class periods. That's not to say that having a strong foundation for the SAP system wasn't crucial to my success, in all honesty SAP is a very scary interface for someone that hasn't ever dealt with it. Luckily the format that UA uses to teach SAP to students uses real world interactions with the system and you actually run a complete business in a controlled environment. It is much better to break something on a test learning system than on a global SAP implementation...

Just to give you some ideas of the places some of us are working here are a list of some of my classmates and their internships, I will list more as I get details from them.

Sichen Dong - Hersey's
Adam Harrel - Campbell's
Myself - Colgate-Palmolive

Again these are just a few of the individuals working in outside internships. As the summer rolls near we will hopefully all be able to find outside internship for our class courses and gain some wonderful experience. Keep watching for updates on the jobs and projects we are working on.

Hello World!

Well everyone, this is a start to a blog I am creating to hopefully give future MIS students out there an idea of what the program is like from a Full-Time MIS student. My name is Zach Steelman and I started the Full-Time MIS program at the University of Arkansas in August of 2009 and will be graduating in July of 2010. I finished my Bachelor's degree in MIS at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma in 2009 and started my Master's program directly afterwards.

One of the driving reasons for chosing the MIS program at UA was the strength of their connections to the corporate world in NWA due to the large number of vendors in the area serving Wal-Mart. After starting the program I was able to grab an internship at Colgate-Palmolive in Rogers, AR working for their Wal-Mart support team. As you go through alot of the classes here at UA you will see many different stories and references to real world cases that deal with vendors in the local area. This real world model helps tremendously when trying to understand the uses and concepts that are taught in the class.

I am opening this blog up to allow anyone out there that is possibly thinking about the program or has applied and would like to get a different view of the program the ability to ask me via email and I will try give, to the best I can, my opinion of the program. I feel that this program has opened up amazing opportunities to myself as well as some of the great things that my friends at UA have accomplished as well. I will try this week and get some pictures and information of my fellow classmates and their Graduate Assistantships/Internships to show the unique positions that the program allows for their students.