Wisdom of the sages: Preparing students for career skills

Abstract

Information systems faculty strive to educate students and provide them with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed as IS professionals. Given the dynamic nature of the IS discipline and workplace, what to teach our undergraduates, especially regarding the issue of balancing technical and "soft-skills," presents an ongoing challenge. While the ACM/AIS IS 2010 Curriculum offers faculty a place to start, we suggest an approach to enhancing traditional IS curriculum guidelines through active engagement with an industry Advisory Board. During the course of a fall and a spring meeting, we posed two questions to our MIS Advisory Board members: "If I only knew_ [during college, first job, etc.]" and "How do we share and impart your wisdom with our students?" This article illustrates the method (modified Nominal Group Technique) we used to collect our Board's wisdom and advice, refine it, and deliver it to our undergraduate students. We also share several ways that our MIS faculty integrate professional development into our undergraduate MIS program. © 2013 by the Association for Information Systems.