IT professors need to recruit students to major in IT/MIS.
I am back in my blog space. I have been busy with my usual tasks of teaching, research, grading exams and assignment and also advising students with regards to coursework for the next semester. As I looked back this past week or so, I also have been engaging and recruiting students to be IT majors. You must be thinking what are you doing that for? The students surely must have decided their majors by now. True and not true. Some colleges allow students to have double majors and I always ask myself why not consider us IT majors. So based on the students performance in class, exams, homework and their work ethics, I approached each student and took some time to talk to them to consider IT. We have had our shortage of IT majors the last few years and I believe you have to do this for the next few years to get the students to consider this as a career. Otherwise the status quo will yield similar or worse results.
I love sports and I see recruiting IT majors very similar to recruiting basketball players for college. Surely, everyone wants to play for the best of the best but if a serious college likes a student athlete, the recruiter has to be persistent in discussing the opportunities of playing for a different school instead of your popular basketball schools. So if you are serious about getting your number of majors to go up, you need to work the extra mile to get these students. You are teaching the introductory class. You have all these “eyeballs” staring at you in class so take the opportunity to know them, share their strengths and promote IT to them. Students need assurance that they can do a major let alone an IT major. Remember they have nightmares about IT as a purely programming analyst position. You have to be there as a coach and advise them. And when they get their first internship, they cannot help but be thankful that you open this road that they never consider in the first place. There is a lot of personal satisfaction especially for myself in knowing that you are part of the students journey as an IT major and eventually starting their career in IT.
You also need to get former students who were once non-IT majors to share with the class and discuss their journey from being a non-IT major to an IT major to securing IT internships and eventually a successful IT-related career. Every student wants to feel “loved” so give them some love and tell them what this journey will be like when they go through. They want to see a recent graduate, a Gen Y, and the transformation process. You will be surprised if you simply do just this ie. recent graduates presenting to your class, the eventual effects on the number of IT majors will be phenomenal.
The introductory class needs to be taught by someone who is passion about IT with an infectious personality that will be able to channel that passion in IT to the students. The instructor in the class has to double her/his duty as mentor and a teacher. Someone who cares and see the potential in each of the students in the class and someone who is never satisfied and will always find a better way of delivery content in class. If you don’t do this, the numbers will continue to decline and no slogans, T-shirts and gimmicks will ever get them back. You need to knock on every door to sell your program.
You need to be a recruiter for IT major.
