Before joining Stony Brook University as the Director of Industrial Outreach for the Center of Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology (CEWIT), I spent 20 years in the staffing business, specializing, for a good portion of that time, in technology staffing.  I have also been the host of a weekly television show called Jobline, broadcast on News 12 Long Island for the last 18 years.  These two experiences, combined with my new position at the Center of Excellence in Wireless & Information Technology at Stony Brook have made me acutely aware of an accelerating problem in the U.S., the technology worker shortage. Despite the fact that 10 of the 15 fastest growing careers in this country are in the technology field, student interest in emerging technology, especially computer science and engineering, as major areas of study, has declined.

While demand for programmers, network specialists and computer engineers were negatively impacted from 2001-2003, since then, new and exceptionally strong job markets have emerged in such areas as biotechnology, homeland security, nanotechnology, alternative energy research, “smart” transportation and even advanced manufacturing.  There has also been a rapid resurgence in information and wireless technology.  Of major concern, however, is that these surging growth areas have not been accompanied by the explosive increases in computer science and related enrollment that took place in the late 1990’s.  In fact, studies conducted by the United States Department of Labor have brought to light a severe reversal of that trend.

By the year 2010, U.S. companies will need nearly 400,000 additional IT workers.  That number is expected to grow to 1 million by the year 2014.  U.S. colleges, however, at the current rate of enrollment, will only be able to produce a maximum of 60,000 Computer Science graduates by 2010.   This will create a massive shortage of Information Technology job candidates both locally and nationally.  This shortage will inhibit growth in virtually every area of industry, make us increasingly dependent on off shoring and outsourcing, and… could, conceivably, have a devastating effect on our economy.

There are some who believe transferring recruitment efforts for engineering and computer science to the web, establishing blogs and offering technologies such as podcasts will ameliorate the decline in enrollment.  I am not one of them.  I experimented with many high tech quick fixes during my technology staffing years and quickly learned the problem was not the method of recruitment, but the overall shortage of workers.  What is the solution to this problem?  Since there is little hope that middle and high school curriculums can be changed, due to mandatory State guidelines, there is only one way to alert students and parents to the coming need for computer science and engineering workers.  Outreach.  We must go into the schools to inform students of the coming needs of the workforce with presentations customized for their age group.  We must also orchestrate a public relations campaign aimed at parents and school administrators, many of whom know someone who was negatively impacted by the collapse of the dotcom bubble in 2001.   With the help of corporate partners such as Microsoft, Cisco Systems, CA, IBM, Northrop-Grumman, Cablevision, and Motorola, all of whom are also attempting to help build a technology workforce of the future, we are embarking on a comprehensive outreach program to educate Long Island students about job creation spawned by the information and emerging technology surge.  The program is called OPLITE, which stands for Outreach Program for Long Island Technology Education.

Under the leadership of founder Scott Passeser and Co-Chairperson, Judy Murrah, Vice President of IT for Motorola Corporation, OPLITE has formed a series of volunteer committees who have successfully developed student competitions, identified partner schools and located additional corporate sponsors.  Our career fair committee is already planning the first OPLITE Technology Career Fair, which will be held at Smithtown High School in the fall of 2007.  Our partner school committee is currently reaching out to 90 school districts on Long Island, all of whom already have an Industry Advisory Board in place.  As of this writing, every Long Island school we have contacted, without exception, has joined the program, which is free to all.

From July 24th-July 26th, 2007 CEWIT/OPLITE hosted one of seven Microsoft DigiGirlz summer camps offered nationwide.  DigiGirlz is an outstanding, far reaching program that tackles the tech worker shortage by attempting to eliminate the serious gender gap that exists in the technology and engineering job markets.  Statistics show enrollment in engineering and computer science is biased in favor of men by a factor of 15-1.  We are proud to host this three day camp, which exposes 125 young women ranging in age from 13-17 to technology in a fun and closely supervised environment.   We applaud the efforts of Microsoft, who is successfully addressing the technology worker shortage.  As of this writing, Stony Brook’s College of Engineering and Applied Sciences in cooperation with CEWIT/OPLITE is now the permanent home of this program.

Scott Passeser Founder & Co-Chairperson