The GET Immersion Experience: A New Model for Leveraging the Synergies between Industry and Academia

1. INTRODUCTION Traditional MIS curricula have focused on topics such as programming, database, and systems analysis and design. Although these topics continue to serve the discipline well, in globally distributed enterprises large scale systems increasingly play a central role. We refer to these systems as "global enterprise technologies" or "GET." The increasing reliance on GET systems (e.g., ERP, CRM, and firm-specific systems) suggests that students' knowledge of large scale systems is crucial in today's highly competitive job market (Cameron, 2010). But even though large scale systems present unique challenges that are increasingly critical (and dominant) within major corporations, MIS education often offers little or no preparation for these skills. As a result, many large companies must train their college hires in the use of large scale systems before they can be productive. In fact, previous research has found that a common concern is that today's graduates do not have the skill sets required for large scale enterprise software development and large scale system adoption (Mulder, Lidtke et al. 1997; Davis 2004; Cameron and Purao 2010). Such practices suggest that integrating large-system concepts within a curriculum would increase the program's desirability and attractiveness to companies, as well as prospective students. In this paper, we describe a multi-university, multi-company program that has been designed to address the challenge of scale. The Global Enterprise Technology Immersion Experience (GET IE) program provides a global enterprise focus for technology-oriented academic majors and integrates coursework with hands-on experiential learning (Saltz & Oh 2012). GET IE creates a domain-specific, next generation co-op consortium that functions across universities and major corporations. The program consists of an eight month (January through August) paid internship integrated with interdisciplinary coursework delivered through blended learning pedagogy. Students typically start the program in the second semester of their junior year, which allows them to complete the program by the end of the following summer. Because of this structure, GET IE allows students to take coursework while simultaneously working at their internship site location. Therefore, the coursework and internship creates a rich synergy in student learning. The program is designed to grow by including multiple academic institutions and industry partners. Universities and companies can join the GET IE consortium or establish their own programs by modeling our effort. At present, the academic partners include Syracuse University, University of Delaware, Rutgers University, and Ohio State University. Industry participants include JPMorgan Chase, IBM, Cisco, Ernst & Young, Nationwide Insurance, and GE. 2. RELATED WORK AND MOTIVATION FOR THE PROGRAM There have been a few previous educational efforts to bring large scale global enterprise concepts into technology-focused curricula. Although the need for teaching large scale enterprise systems has been previously noted (Cameron 2008), faculty have typically attempted to rectify the current omission of large scale systems via the inclusion of an enterprise technology course (Wegmann 2004; Nickerson 2006). For example, previous efforts have described faculty and industry representatives working together to construct a curriculum component that is designed to prepare students for developing large scale systems from the very beginning of the system design and specifications to development of communication skills necessary for such a work environment (Lidtke and Stokes 1999). University faculty and industry representatives worked together to develop this course (Lidtke and Stokes 1999). Other efforts have described enterprise integration using a business-centric method for a course at the senior undergraduate level (Davis 2004). Researchers have argued that in enterprise systems education, both technical and business aspects of systems development must be taught to fulfill the pedagogical requirements for such a curriculum component (Cameron 2008). …