What do our graduates do after Hartwick? Here is an example of one student who went down the less trodden path.
About a week after graduation I began working here at Estee Lauder, in the LAN/WAN group. I contribute the better part of my current career success to Prof. Lichtman's Computer Networking class, as that's where I discovered my penchant for networking. Had I gone to another college or university, and gotten a standard programming-oriented Computer Science degree, I would likely be heading in a completely different direction, and not have been nearly as excited about my work. It's these special electives, that you miss out on at the larger "factory" institutions, that make all the difference.
A perk of my position is that I have a great deal of freedom to research new technologies and implement them in our network. A field that I've done some substantial work in is SNMP, a great protocol to talk to Cisco devices in. While cutting new ground in that area, I was able to call upon a number of the low-level concepts I learned in Dr. Gann's Assembly course, as well as some of the Perl that I picked up in Dr. Gann's Network Security course. Lastly, I found very quickly that the best way to present work you've done to others is by focusing on the visual presentation, something Prof. Carbone could not stress enough in Systems Analysis and Design. Visual Basic is really second-to-none in presentation and end-user ease-of-adaption, so again, I have to thank Prof. Carbone for all of her work in that area.
I can honestly say that I would not be where I am today, nor would I have succeeded as much in the IT industry, without all of the tools I gained in my years at Hartwick. While I could have learned the same facts at another larger institution, I would have missed out on the attention from an exceptional teaching staff. If I had to make the decision of where to go again, I would definitely choose Hartwick.
Brian Salisbury
Class of 2002
There are many directions a student can take after graduating from the IS or CS programs. Art Sassone took a different path yet.
Well, It's been almost 8 years since I graduated and I can say that I've gotten a lot out of the Info Sci Major from Hartwick. All the IT classes I took at Hartwick still seem relevant today in some shape or form along with the Management classes I took at Hartwick.
After college I moved to NYC unsure of what I wanted to do – work in programming, or in the business field - so I took a Technical Recruiting job at a Placement Firm.
Well, after about 3 months of placing IT people and witnessing the hot IT market in 1998, I decided to seek a programming job.
I was hired at the pharmaceutical company Bristol Myers-Squibb and worked there for 2 years using Oracle, Perl and PL/SQL as well as managing several projects.
I worked on large scale projects, including creating and managing a database of over 50,000 employees and a website to allow employees to manage and book their travel plans.
I was fortunate to have a great manager that allowed me to manage many projects and I worked directly with executive management of Bristol Myers-Squibb.
I was involved in MetroLink while I lived in NYC and I had a few Hartwick IT majors shadow me each year.
After 2 years at BMS, I caught the 'dot-com' bug and jumped to the New York Times Digital (nytimes.com) and worked on some interesting projects. I did alot of shell scripting along with Perl Programming on Unix servers creating dynamic web pages for the nytimes.com website. I worked on the 2000 election website parsing data feeds from all major electoral races across the country and creating web content.
After 1 year at NYTD I returned to my former employer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, with whom I had kept in touch with over the year. This time I was offered a job to return as an independent consultant.
That was a great experience because I had the same job as the first time with BMS, but now I was a contract employee.
In late 2002 my family and I decided to move to upstate NY, so I made a call to the Albany Times Union and found an opportunity to join them as a consultant. They needed someone for a 4 month job while a programmer was on maternity leave. To make a long story short, they hired me on and I have been here for over 3 years now and living in Saratoga County.
I'm currently working on .Net development (VB.net and C#) along with XML and database development. I work a little on www.timesunion.com but work mostly on the back-end database and internal applications. I also manage several projects and enjoy working with people and technology.
Outside of the office, I’m always looking to start my own projects. In 2001 I started a dot-com company along with a friend which worked with Major League Baseball, the NFL and Major League Soccer. After a few years of doing this, we actually merged with a similar company since the ‘part-time’ job was becoming a ‘full-time’ job. Although not involved with this venture anymore, I still like to work on side projects and stay up to date with current trends.
I really enjoyed my time at Hartwick and feel like I got a lot out of the Management Information Science program. The labs, the teams, the projects, the professors, the resources. It's a foundation that I still find relevant today.
Art Sassone
Class of 1998
While some students opt for the non-traditional careers many find the good old fashioned computer science to be just what they want.
Ben Buley graduated in May of 2002. Just before he graduated, the following appeared in The Wick, Hartwick's alumni magazine.
Computer science major Ben Buley, of Cornwall, Vermont, owes a major debt of gratitude to serendipity. Ben's advisor, Professor Robert Gann, arranged a summer internship for Ben at a company that Ben had never heard of. That company turned out to be Black River Systems in Utica, New York -- named "1999 Engineering Company of the Year" by the Mohawk Valley Engineers Executive Council. Black River Systems does applied systems engineering work on high-tech defense machinery and provides software and technological support for organizations such as the Air Force Research laboratory and Mercury Computer Systems. During his first summer there, Ben served as Black River's systems administrator in charge of maintaining servers and workstations. The following summer, he worked on a radar algorithm project and evaluated key components of Black River's security and management software. Ben's value has been so high that he has been invited to return after graduation -- for a full-time position as a software programmer. Gann's initial contact "panned out very well," says Ben with a smile.
Serendipity also landed Ben at Hartwick. While driving down Interstate 88 on the way from Vermont to Pennsylvania, his family decided to detour briefly to let Ben take a look at Hartwick. Ben liked Hartwick's size and the spectacular view, but what really impressed him was "the technology. The first thing was the laptop program. Then I started learning about all the other things that Hartwick had wired into campus. Compared to the other schools I was considering, there really was no comparison."
Ben's senior thesis project is a response to the phenomenal growth of the World Wide Web. Strain of web servers is prompting widespread concerns about the Web's long-term viability. Ben is addressing this concern through a new technique for reducing server slowdowns. The most common technique for handling big loads has been to cluster servers so they can work together to "load balance." Encryption, which the high volume of e-commerce, has made increasingly necessary, slows this process by hogging processing power. Ben is developing a technique for off loading the encryption onto a separate area -- speeding up both the encryption and the servers and making the entire system more efficient. "That's what I'm tying to do -- and working diligently at it," says Ben.
Ben's time at Hartwick has been very focused on computers. He has worked in just about every computer-related context at Hartwick -- computer labs, the Help Desk, and the TeleCenter. Ben has also helped the Computer and Information Sciences Department and the College in every way possible. He currently serves on the Technology Committee as part of the College's planning process. Says Ben, "I decided I wanted to lend a hand. Sooner or later, I won't be here anymore, and I want to maintain a link to make sure that the College lives on."
