Monthly Archives: February 2008

Undergraduates Teach HTML Skills to MIS204 Students

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Students who have successfully completed MIS 204 are invited to return to complete independent study as “Teaching Interns” (TIs).  Dr. Glantz implemented this program at Smeal around 2002 based on ideasJenniferONeill_KristinaKolaronda.JPG

from Dr. David DiBiase  (PSU’s Earth and Mineral Sciences).    The TI program provides important educational benefits to students teaching others about technology in business.  In the photo above, TIs Jennifer O’Neill and Kristina Kolaronda present an HTML writing lesson to current MIS 204 students.  The HTML exercise helps “demystify” a technology for business students, while providing insight into benefits from developing personal ePortfolios.

Student Spotlight: Stephanie Goldberg – First Year Student Interns at Morgan Stanley

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Picture 1.pngMy internship was in the Corporate Finance for IT section of Morgan Stanley in New York City. I was primarily dealing with maintaining and enhancing the reports and their related systems used by the financial controllers. The Morgan Stanley corporate Data Warehouse used to store this information is called WISE (Warehouse and Integrated Services for the Enterprise).

Employees at Morgan constantly refer to terms learned in MIS 204 such as metadata, legacy systems, and middleware to discuss problems and explain how the system works.  This internship helped me to see the real world application of the concepts learned in class.  Programs such as Microsoft Excel, Access, Word, and PowerPoint were highly used and knowledge of the programs is expected of all employees.   

Overall, taking MIS 204 helped me greatly by giving me the insight into the IT world to be able to effectively understand and exceed the knowledge expectations of how information systems worked.

Even though I am an accounting major, the knowledge that I gained through the internship as well as in MIS 204 will be of extreme value in the future.  More and more professions require knowledge of IT and MIS.   

As a message to MIS 204 students, I would like to stress that the information in the class is used in the business world in all fields.  You do not need to be an MIS or IT major to be expected to know and understand these terms.  In the Accounting field, for example, new departments called IT Audit require knowledge of information systems as well as knowledge of accounting.  The world is becoming more diverse and an understanding of information systems and MIS concepts will give you a competitive advantage in the business world.   

 I just want to thank you for thoroughly explaining the complexities of information systems and MIS concepts because it has greatly increased my knowledge and was extremely beneficial in my performance as an intern at Morgan Stanley.  Please let me know if you would like me to further explain anything I mentioned.   

 Thank you,

 Stephanie Goldberg

Getting Started in Project Management

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Below are some tips for students interested in learning more about Project Management.

One thought is to listen to Project Management podcasts on your iPod or computer as there are quite a few available through iTunes.   One that I enjoy is the “Project Management Podcast” hosted by Cornelious Fictner (web link).  For example, Episode 86 is called “Four Hotels and Casino Projects” with guest Nehme E. Abouzeid.  Nehme works for the Las Vegas Sands Corporation in Las Vegas, Nevada, and his projects were major and business critical. We hear about

  • a ticketing system that he helped build for their entertainment center,

  • a convention system for the hotel,

  • process improvement projects and

  • a retail system project (where the complete retail system for a series of stores had to be replaced in just one night!)

In many Project Management discussions you will hear “PMP” or “Project Management Professional” certification mentioned.  Another opportunity for students is to begin investigating the PMP certification process. Follow the link to PMI (Project Management Institute)  – they manage the PMP certification.

Finally, Episode 19 of the PM411.org podcast (Ron Holohan, PMP, Sean Futterer, PMP and Cornelius Fichtner, PMP) discussed their favorite web resources: