{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.010680157391793142, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0016863406408094434, 'mean_word_length': 5.334519572953736, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 2, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Development of a baccalaureate major in information technology: adding a third dimension to a comprehensive computing program

The Information Technology discipline has become increasingly important both to higher education, business and industry. Although there has been a continuous growth of IT technical support jobs, several research studies claim that there are many unfilled information technology jobs because of the lack of workers who possess adequate knowledge and skills, even in the current economic climate. In response to this need in the computing industry, a new baccalaureate program in Information Technology was created. Creating this new Information Technology major in a school that already has an accredited CS major and IS major adds a third dimension to the available computing majors. In order to develop a program that is able to meet the market needs as well as being eligible for accreditation, a Model for Curriculum Development was designed as a guide that would provide a manageable and organized development process.
 This paper presents the process that the Information Technology committee at the School of Computing and Information Systems at Grand Valley State University is following in order to develop an Information Technology major degree. Specially, the paper focuses on the internal environmental scan section of the needs assessment phase. Additionally, this paper introduces the results of a survey that was conducted to determine students' interest in the proposed Information Technology major. Data was collected from 150 students of diverse majors who were taking computing courses. The results of the survey indicate that students viewed the knowledge areas that are covered in IT as important skills for their professional life.