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 On September 7th, 2011, the University of California - Santa
Cruz announced a new degree major: Bachelor of Arts in
Networking and Digital Technology. This new B.A. degree
creates new options for ICT students, in addition to current
opportunities in more traditional UCSC Engineering, Computer
Science and Computer Engineering programs.
This is very exciting!
A big problem in ICT education and workforce development
exists in the middle tier of the ICT Pyramid, the “ICT
Enablers” level, which basically represents the Information
Technology (IT) operations of all kinds of organizations.
This is where organizations apply mature ICT technologies in
the real world to achieve their organizational missions and
enable the productivity of their ICT Users, the lower tier
of the ICT Pyramid (which in most organizations is most
people in almost all departments).
The problem is that many of those organizations’ Human
Resources departments require bachelor degrees for IT
organization jobs, even when what they want is people with
hands-on, applied technical knowledge and skills. Most
public 4-year colleges and universities do not prepare
students for applied technology “IT” roles. Rather, they
prepare students for engineering, scientific, and research
and development roles at the top of the ICT Pyramid. (All of
these tiers are very important.)
Students who acquire hands-on, applied technology knowledge
and skills in community colleges do not have
enough good opportunities for transfer to public, 4-year
colleges and universities to get bachelor degrees. That is
because so many 4-year colleges and universities do not
accept community college applied technology credits for
transfer, because those courses do not fit with R&D oriented
program focuses. Generally, this transfer pathway is broken
in public higher education, except for traditional Computer
Science programs. Many ICT students are forced to pursue
bachelor degrees at private colleges and universities that
have created transfer pathway solutions for this problem,
like DeVry and University of Phoenix.
That’s what makes this new degree offering from UC Santa
Cruz so exciting. UCSC already offered Computer Science and
Computer Engineering programs through its
Baskin School of
Engineering. Those programs offer several degrees in
Computer Science and Computer Engineering.
“This degree is intended for students who have an interest
in the technology but don’t aspire to be engineers,”
according to J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, professor and chair of
UCSC’s Computer Engineering department.
Rick Graziani, CIS/CS instructor at MPICT Regional Partner
Cabrillo College, is working with J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves on
developing articulation and collaboration relationships and
agreements between UCSC and community colleges in the MPICT
region. According to Rick, articulation of networking and
system administration courses, co-offering courses, sharing
resources, and collaboration between community college and
UCSC faculty and students are just some of the ideas being
discussed. After an initial meeting with UCSC, Rick Graziani
stated, “UCSC is really excited to be working with us. We
are going to be working with UCSC very closely, similar to
the wonderful collaboration we have with CSU – MB”
(California State University Monterey Bay).
CSU- Monterey Bay is another public higher education
transfer pathway from community college to university that
works in California for hands-on I.T. technical courses.
Community college IT students have a great opportunity to
transfer to CSU-MB’s Computer Science and Information
Technology (CSIT) program and get credit for their community
college technical courses.
The collaboration with UCSC will provide another option for
students seeking a public university four-year degree.
It is wonderful that both of these recently created
baccalaureate degree options for ICT Enablers have been
developed in the beautiful Monterey Bay region. People seem
to get it there, and from there it is only a short drive
over the mountains to Silicon Valley.
Back to Q3 2011
Newsletter |
