SIDEBAR: CIOs Going Back to School

by Todd Datz

If you want to be a CIO, it doesn't hurt to have a little CFO in you

As CIOs and aspiring CIOs are increasingly forced to heed the demand that they lift their business and commercial skills, Tony Rossano, senior client partner with Korn/Ferry International, says some are supplementing time spent in parallel moves across the organization with postgraduate degrees in business studies, finance, marketing or other areas.

"For those who are coming up through the ranks we're seeing an increasing need to develop not only the domain and competency experience within the technology sphere, but more importantly an understanding of how the business values technology.

"So rather than spending 20 years going from computer operator to computer programmer to assistant programmer or business analyst and up through the ranks to CIO, some people are actually jumping out halfway up that career trajectory and moving into corporate line roles. They are building a skill set not only in terms of the corporate view, but also understanding what it means to have technology as an enabler of the business's needs," Rossano says.

"Some of them are complementing that hands-on practical experience with postgraduate studies, and then jumping back into technology three, five, seven years later so they've got the technology experience coupled with the line-of-business experience. Bringing those together kind of facilitates their career development in the new world of the CIO," he says.

When it comes to making choices about furthering professional qualifications and training there are certainly no shortage of academic options. For the past 30 years, an MBA degree has been seen as the benchmark that the business community sets for managers to progress to senior executive level.

With the rise and rise of the information technology industry, most tertiary institutions offering information sciences or computing degrees are adding a masters option - often in the form of a Masters in Business Technology or a Masters in Information Technology Management - while almost every tertiary institution in Australia offers an MBA.

SIDEBAR: School Spirit

Five things CIOs can do to influence college curricula - and help themselves

• Join an industry advisory council. Many computing departments have one; they're typically made up of alumni, CIOs, CEOs of tech companies and even an academic or two, and they meet once or twice a year.
• Participate in an industrial affiliates program. Many leading computer science departments have one. For a fee, companies usually receive a one-day program through which they can get early access to student research. Executives also get the opportunity to lobby students and faculty about the kinds of research they're interested in.
• Host a co-op or an intern. Not only do you get cheap labour, you create partnerships with local schools and often get first dibs at hiring the interns after they graduate. It's also another vehicle for you to offer input into a school's curriculum.
• Talk to classes. Professors often invite businesspeople to speak to students. Why not practise a little public speaking, and at the same time tell teachers and students what kinds of skills you recommend graduates get? And you can leave your business card.
• Get involved in your local professional IT groups. They provide great opportunities for meeting local faculty.

SIDEBAR: Transforming Computer Science

by Todd Datz

To address declining enrolment in computer science programs and change the image of the CS student, the deans have come up with a formula: CS + X

At the annual Computing Research Association (CRA) conference in 2003, deans of college computer science and engineering departments met to discuss what to do about declining enrolments and the rising demand from corporate IT for grads with soft skills. One of the most pressing items on their agenda was what to do about the perception that the tech world is populated largely by introverts, happy to hide behind their screens all day eating energy bars. The new IT worker, everyone agrees, is going to have to leap over the cube wall to work with a variety of people in a variety of ways. "They'll need to work well in teams, work well with customers, have great communication skills and be problem solvers," says Maria Klawe, dean of Princeton's School of Engineering and Applied Science.

The formula for teaching kids how to do that, some CRA attendees believe, is CS + X: taking computer science (CS) and combining it with other areas of study (X), such as business, psychology, biology or art. "The world needs people who can cross traditional disciplines," says Klawe. Indeed, Princeton now offers a first-year course in bioinformatics that integrates maths, physics, biology and computer science. As part of the School of Engineering and Applied Science's strategic plan, the faculty is going to grow by 25 percent, and all of the new professors - some 32 people - will have cross-disciplinary abilities. (One recent hire has a CS and biology background.)

Jeannette Wing, president's professor of computer science and head of Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science, believes CS students will increasingly go into non-IT-specific professions. "If you think about science today - astronomy, chemistry, physics - it has mounds and mounds of data that [people in those fields] don't know how to process," she says. "That's where computers can come into play."

"Virtually every discipline and industry needs IT and computer science," says Klawe. "If you're talking to an anthropologist, there are opportunities for using IT [in that field]; same if you're talking to architects or physicists."

CS + X, in that it integrates computing with the needs of an increasingly technocentric world, is increasingly looking like the answer for computer science curricula. And it could change that geek image forever.