Career Opportunities

Where will IST students work? IST graduates may follow a wide-variety of career paths. Any company, large or small, that owns a significant number of computers that may or may not be linked together on a local and/or wide area network, needs someone to keep the computers operating efficiently. Graduates may be found at banks, credit unions, insurance companies, law offices, manufacturing operations, hospitals, clinics, government offices, social service agencies, etc. IST graduates will be found where the computers are- and computers are everywhere!

Some IST graduates may work exclusively with databases. Companies that require large databases will also require skilled employees to maintain and query these databases. These may be companies or brokerage firms, telecommunication corporations, communication enterprises, etc. Actually, most companies rely on some type of databases for their day-to-day operations. This would include hospitals with patient databases, sales operations with their customer databases, purchasing schools with their supplier-databases; schools with their student-databases, etc.

Companies need someone to install software upgrades. Some type of formal or informal help desk may be needed to assist the users, and an IST graduate might be found at that desk. Some IST graduates will take specific courses to prepare themselves to work in the training function of the business, to train employees to work efficiently with specific Software programs--and the programs keep coming. Employee turnover also necessitates on-going training.

The internet with its' many Web sites has created another vast job area that IST graduates may consider such as the tasks of setting up and maintaining Web sites; responding to customers' e-mail queries; working the policy-formation or security issues regarding electronic communication. Companies want Internet capabilities, but also want to keep people out of confidential corporate data. How to let people in and keep them out is one of the challenges of this age, and IST graduates will be there to help.

To give IST students a taste of what the business world as it relates to computer technology, a 4 credit hour IST Internship is required of all students. During that semester the student will work at a company site with computer professionals.

For more information on IST Career Opportunities contact Cindy Jenkins at cjenk@siu.edu.