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Educated for Success

Marist College students benefit from school's partnership with IBM

Without having much exposure to enterprise computing, prospective college students considering a future in IT or computer-science programs may have only heard the word “mainframe” mentioned in movies.

Students attending Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., have the opportunity to not only learn about the mainframe, but also work directly with System z* servers. Thanks to the college’s 20-year relationship with IBM, students get hands-on experience with mainframe technology they wouldn’t get anywhere else. The IBM/Marist partnership is so unique the relationship is prominently advertised in the college recruitment material.

Sean Goldsmith, a senior computer-science major from Poughkeepsie, says Marist appealed to him because of the connection the school had with IBM. “I understood the college must be teaching something useful or important since outside industries are investing heavily and the college would be using the same technology found in the industry,” says Goldsmith. Before taking his first z/OS* course his junior year, he knew little about the mainframe. “The mainframe to me was one of those mysterious words, which I associated with a super-powerful machine guarding top-secret information,” he says. “It turns out my original feelings weren’t completely wrong.”

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