International Direct - Bachelor of Science - Information Technology

International direct admission is for international students with advanced English-language skills. It focuses on academic, cultural, and professional growth so students can excel in school—and prepare for a successful future.

International direct students receive: • Exclusive and rigorous academic coursework • Priority access to in-demand courses that fit their interests • Guidance from academic advisors and mentors • Career development and networking opportunities • Intensive classes with domestic students

The Bachelor of Science in Information Technology is a hands-on, project-based program. Students will be working on projects, by themselves, in pairs and in teams. The projects will be the kind that they may encounter in the workplace. The major is offered by two colleges: the College of Science and Mathematics and the College of Management. This makes for a better program; students get both the technical aspects and the business aspects of IT.

There is a core body of knowledge (provided by a core set of courses) that everyone masters. Then students choose a specific track in which to concentrate. There are also various electives from which you may choose. Right now there are four tracks: • System administrator • Information architecture • Business intelligence • Computer forensics

The system administrator track prepares students for a career in system and network administration. The study of operating systems is a part of this track since networks are normally implemented based on a family of operating systems (e.g. cs.umb.edu is implemented using UNIX and umb.edu is implemented using Microsoft Windows). The Computer Science Department is well-placed to offer this track. The information architecture (IA) track prepares students to be able to specify the requirements and overall architecture of a component-based system. The MSIS Department is well-placed to offer this track drawing upon its expertise in both business principles and technology.

Business intelligence is the technology that companies such as Amazon.com and Google use to take advantage of the enormous amount of data they collect and analyze. It is the technology with which Amazon.com knows what book to recommend to customers every time they log in, Google knows how to rank the pages people are searching for, and banks decide whether to approve loan applications almost instantly. As organizations increasingly have to deal with “big data,” the number of job openings and the need for skilled professionals in this field will continue to increase.

The computer forensics track is a discipline of forensic science that combines elements of law and information technology to collect and analyze data from computer systems, networks, wireless communications, and storage devices in a way that is admissible as evidence in a court of law. CF is also the process of using scientific knowledge for collecting, analyzing, and presenting digital evidence to the courts. With the increasing use of computers to commit crimes and the growing demand for computer-based data in civil proceedings, a need has rapidly developed for forensic experts to extract useful information from computer evidence.