It is the goal of SMU’s program to prepare students for the management level or as a direct contributor to the technology. Students will gain a foundation in the current technology and the ability to grow as practices and technology shift within the industry. Students currently hired in the profession as well as STEM/Business undergraduates are expected to be the highest demographics of the course.
Chris Crosby, CEO of Compass Datacenters, noted that the “program addresses a long unfulfilled need in the datacenter industry … Its comprehensive, cross-disciplinary curriculum provides the breadth of knowledge professionals need for success in this complex industry with numerous interdependencies.”
The program will be available for full and part time graduate students on campus and via the Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering’s distance education platform. The program will revolve around five core courses and specialize in the following technical aspects:
- Subsystems, infrastructure and facilities
- Engineering and analytics of data systems
- Networks, security, virtualization and cloud computing
To qualify for admission, students must have a Bachelors of Science in computer science, engineering, mathematics or quantitative science. They must also have completed at least two years of college-level math, which must include at least one year of college-level calculus.
Marc Christensen, Dean of the Lyle School said, “Our society has become intimately linked to a variety of digital networks including social media, search engines, e-commerce, gaming and big data … Data center design is a fascinating challenge due to the millions of dollars lost per second of outage. The proper management and design of these datacenters require a diverse combination of highly specialized skills, and SMU Lyle is uniquely positioned to offer a degree that will connect all the needed technical disciplines.”
The course will consist of live instruction (for on campus students) that will then be recorded and available to distance education students online within an hour of when the class ends.
Source SMU