[GLLUG] MSU Degrees in Computer Information Systems

[Edward Glowacki]

On Tue, 2002-03-19 at 12:53, Brian Hoort wrote:
> To those of you who work at MSU or have graduated from there:
> 
> I have been looking for an appropriate program of study and am having 
> difficulty figuring out what college or program fits best. Hopefully some 
> of you can share your experiences. I am currently a Microcomputer 
> Coordinator at MSU and perform typical functions like maintaining a student 
> lab, a library lab, faculty and staff PCs, file, print, & web servers, some 
> database & web development, etc.
> 
> Engineering has, well, engineers, not sysadmins. Telecommunication seems 
> the closest bet, but when I look over the classes it all appears to be TV / 
> radio related. There just doesn't seem to be an Information Technology Program.
> 
> Any ideas? For those of you that have degrees semi-related to your career, 
> what are they?
> 
> Thank You!

I've been working for MSU for over 3 years now (full time) doing mostly
system administration.  I'm finishing up my undergrad degrees in
Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) and Telecommunications (TC).  CSE
is definitely more influential to my work than TC.  However I do know
quite a few others that also do sysadmin work, but that are straight TC
majors.  TC is also a considerably easier program than CSE, and CSE in
turn is easier than something like Electrical Engineering.  (Yes, I am
qualified to make this judgment, since I was EE, then TC, now TC+CSE. 
College of Engineering requirements like Calculus are killers.)  I'm not
passing judgement on anybody here, what I'm trying to say is that the
degree certainly isn't all that makes a person what they are.  (In fact,
most of the TC major sysadmins I know are 10x sharper than most of the
seniors I meet in my CSE classes.)

It ultimately depends on what exactly you are interested in.  TC really
doesn't deal with computers as much as it deals with applications of
computers, i.e. things you can do with them that relate to TV/web/etc.. 
There's a lot of good stuff in CSE about how computers really function,
but most of it is higher level and restricted to CSE majors only.  

In my specific academic path (which as I said includes some EE, TC, and
CSE), I've learned about everything from how a CPU works to process
scheduling algorithms to network protocols to specific programming
languages.  Most of it doesn't directly apply to my day-to-day work, but
understanding all of it makes learning the skills I *do* use that much
easier, and it makes it easier to figure out where things are going
wrong when there's trouble.  

It's like driving a car: you don't need to know how the car works in
order to get from point A to point B, but if you *do* understand how the
car works then you can do things like push-start a car (if it has a
manual transmission anyways) when the battery is dead rather than have
to call a tow truck for a jump start.  Not required, but really good to
know if you're ever in that situation. =)




-- 
Edward Glowacki				glowack2@msu.edu
GLLUG Peon  				http://www.gllug.org
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
                -- Jules de Gaultier