With money from Louisiana, Grambling State’s business college significantly ramps up tech resources to help students excel
By Stephanie Lindsey/GSU Media Bureau
Grambling State University’s College of Business is the proud recipient of a much-needed technology upgrade. The COB is installing more than 100 Dell computers to replace old ones in three labs in the Jacob T. Stewart Building where the college is located.
The upgrade was funded by Louisiana’s Workforce and Innovation for a Stronger Economy Fund, or the WISE fund. The WISE Fund was created in 2014 by the Louisiana Legislature “to provide an incentive for postsecondary educational institutions to increase the production of certificates, diplomas, and degrees in fields of high demand by Louisiana employers, and to spur additional research and innovation as a meaningful way of supporting economic development,” according to the fund’s web site.
The computer labs are available to students of the college’s two STEM majors, accounting and computer information systems. All business students are required to take at least two courses in each discipline.
Grambling’s College of Business applied for the funding as a way to help its STEM students remain on the cutting edge of technology.
“It is our goal to make sure that our students and faculty have state-of-the-art technology available to assist with the facilitation of learning in all areas, says GSU Provost Ellen Smiley. “This is especially necessary for our college of business, computer science department and engineering technology department.”
Donald White, interim dean of the college, and computer information systems professor Kevin Sly say there is a skills-gap along the I-20 corridor and that the new computers will allow students leaving Grambling State to be competitive in the Northern Louisiana job force.
White points out that “this is an initiative to help prepare and produce those people who could actually fill those positions from Monroe to Shreveport. There are unfilled positions right now because of unqualified workers in the STEM area.”
Sly, in agreement with White, notes that there are thousands of jobs along the I-20 corridor that students from the college of business could be qualified for. “We are trying to make sure that our students are where they need to be in terms of technology so they can get these jobs,” he says. “So they don’t have to go to Dallas or D.C. or Atlanta.”
Both White and Sly believe the upgrade couldn’t be happening at a better time.
“We’ve had the old computers for a long, long time, and they move very slowly and we get a lot of complaints from students and faculty and it was time for a change,” says White. “This is a God send for us.”
The new computers are faster and smaller, which helps to cut down on the heat in the labs and reduces the space used. “Our labs will be all new by the fall,” adds Sly. “I’m excited for the new students coming in.”
The computers were not the sole mission of the business college but a piece of a larger project. “We just have to get more on the cutting edge. But obviously we need the technology, physical resources, as well as the human capital to go where we need to go,” adds White. “As far as getting our students ready to participate on a much larger scale we first must train them. In order to train them, we need the necessary wherewithal to get that done.”
The students are seeing the benefits of the new computers. The upgrades mean new and better programs for them to master. Marquis Gaydun is a junior majoring in business management and one of the students benefiting from the new computers. “Mr. Sly introduced us to Developer, a program that we can use to take normal slides and presentations and make them more dynamic,” Gaydun says.
Sly believes that his students are on their way to promising careers thanks to the upgrades. “Through graphic design programs like Developer and Visual Basic the students are becoming experts in their field. The department has already created, defined and set a base salary expectation between $50,000 and $70,00 for students when they graduate,” says Sly. “We call them Advanced Graphics Presentation Designers. What we want to do at Grambling is develop a team of advanced graphic designers to go out and redo the way we do slide presentations. We turn PowerPoint presentations into seamless dynamic presentations. It is a revolutionary idea.”
“This is a new day for us, adds White, “and we are happy to see it, simply because it is necessary for us to move forward to bigger and better things.”
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