Marist Computing Conference to Address Shortage in Mainframe Employees

POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y., May 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A national conference to address the critical skills shortage in enterprise computing will be held June 13-15 in the Student Center at Marist College. The conference is free and open to the public. Those who register by May 14 will be entered in a raffle for an iPad. Some restrictions apply. For further information or to register, visit http://ecc.marist.edu/conf.

Funded by a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, the Enterprise Computing Community Conference will bring together representatives from industry and academia to explore ways to develop a college curriculum to teach large system technology skills to computer science, information technology, and information systems students. Academic partners on the grant include Illinois State University, North Carolina Central University, University of Arkansas, and Widener University.

The 30 sessions and panel discussions scheduled for the two days will focus on topics such as open-source applications, green data centers, cloud computing, security technology and policy in large systems, enterprise applications for social causes, and in-demand enterprise computing skills.

The leadership keynote speaker on June 15 will be Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger, vice president emeritus and consultant at the IBM Corporation and visiting lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Wladawsky-Berger said he will focus on America's primary asset, intellectual capital, which places America in a strong position across a variety of enterprises. "In the 21st century, leaders must determine how to leverage technology to spur innovation across all kinds of societal challenges and industries including energy, health care, financial services and urban infrastructure."

Other keynote presentations will be delivered on June 14 by Marist College alumnus Jeff Nick, senior vice president and chief technology officer at EMC Software, and Chris O'Malley, executive vice president of Cloud Products CA.

"Industry and government are struggling to attract new technologists to replace aging workers who manage the enterprise computing systems that are vital to continued economic growth and national security," said Dr. Roger Norton, dean of the School of Computer Science and Mathematics at Marist. "This will leave gaps in the workforce in a variety of areas critical to our country: banking, commerce, health care, public safety, transportation and the military."

"Despite the number of jobs available now, and many more opening up in the years ahead, enrollment in college computing programs remains low across the nation," said Mary Ann Hoffmann, assistant dean of the School of Computer Science and Mathematics. "Without more U.S. graduates in these fields, jobs will continue to be moved offshore, losing employment opportunities for the American workforce."

Large data centers are often used to remotely host applications from multiple businesses while minimizing energy requirements. Enterprise computing involves data processing and data mining on a vast scale and thousands of simultaneous users. It is the set of nonproprietary, open-standard computer technologies (i.e., hardware, software and practices) needed to integrate and automate large-scale systems, including mainframes, servers, and peripheral devices, interconnected by a network forming a virtual centralized computing facility.

Conference co-sponsors include CA, Compute (Bridgend) Ltd, IBM, New Era Software, Clarkson University, Red Hat/DLT Solutions, Rocket Software and State Farm Insurance.

CONTACT: Tim Massie, +1-845-575-3171, or Mary Ann Hoffmann, +1-845-575-3611, both of Marist College

SOURCE Marist College