By: Deborah Johnson Wood
Agile software development skills are among the highest in-demand tech skills in the marketplace today and, according to one Michigan entrepreneur, Calvin College might be the only college in the state adequately equipping students with those skills.
"Calvin is the only college we recruit from because they're the only college I know of that's teaching agile technology," says Gary Gentry of Pillar Technology Group. "They're one of the few institutions in the country that's getting ahead of the curve with agile development. The demand will be so high for those students I'm willing to make a commitment to hire them by the time they reach their junior year."
While Calvin doesn't teach a specific class on agile development, the principles—including pair programming, short iterations, quick responsiveness to changes, and steady contact with the customer—are sprinkled throughout the curriculum and taught from the first week of freshman classes up through graduation.
"To my knowledge," says Professor Keith Vander Linden, chair of Calvin's computer sciences department, "all of our computer science grads have jobs when they graduate. This year's juniors and next year's freshmen will be able to find jobs. Our top three graduates from last year are making about $65,000."
Vander Linden says that the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that in five years the number of I.T. jobs in the U.S. will far outnumber the graduates in the field because computer science enrollments have dropped over 40 percent across the nation. A problem countries overseas don't have.
"America has fallen behind in producing the grads we need to fill the jobs," Gary Gentry says. "So every year we plan to bring more students from Calvin's program into our company."
Source: Keith Vander Linden, Calvin College; Gary Gentry, Pillar Technology Group
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Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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