Aquinas College :: Computer Information Services

AQ Difference

Students earning a CIS or MIS degree at Aquinas encounter abundant internship and full-time job opportunities. Even in an economic climate where many entry-level graduates find it difficult to job-search, our graduates are finding many opportunities; they are often hired before graduation. Area job fairs, online postings, personal networks, and, of course, Aquinas’s excellent Career Service referrals are all good methods of job- and internship-hunting. Other options for graduates are to continue on to pursue a Master’s of Science in an IT-related field.

Recent CIS Graduates

Brian McDonald

	Brian McDonald, a 2009 Aquinas graduate, works at Auto-Owner’s Insurance in Lansing, Michigan. Hired weeks before graduation through an area career fair opportunity, Brian now bears the title of Associate Software Developer. Among his many duties are COBOL programming and Mobius reporting maintenance. Currently, he is working on a database and control file conversion and upgrade project to DB2.

	Brian earned a double major while at Aquinas, combining the technical skills of the Computer Information Systems program with the business skills of Business Administration. He prepared himself well for full-time employment through summer internship experiences in at Gordon Food Service and Steelcase (both based in Grand Rapids, Michigan). He emphasizes the importance of group work in academic projects, as these types of projects are more the norm in today’s business arena.

	Brian also credits many of his Aquinas profs with his preparation for the job market—both Business and CIS instructors. His profs, in turn, credit him for helping make a great reputation for our grads! Area companies, including Steelcase, are working actively with Aquinas to develop more formalized internship “feeder” programs. We think this is a win-win situation for our students and businesses alike!

Jeff Moore

	Jeff Moore, a 2009 Aquinas graduate, turned a summer internship into a full-time job offer upon graduation. Jeff applied for a summer internship at a locally-based international company, Amway, via an online posting the summer after his junior year. Hired and placed in the Records Management department at Amway, Jeff assessed an outdated database program, designed and recommended a replacement custom application for them, and then built, tested, and installed this application. The internship became a part-time job through his senior year; Jeff was then offered a full-time job in web development upon graduation. It was partially Jeff’s impact at Amway that encouraged them to work at setting up a more formalized internship “feeder” program so that they can continue to get the “best and the brightest” of our CIS graduates.

	In his year at Amway, Jeff has assisted at all levels of web development, including running and scheduling code builds and deployments in varying environments, change management, and project team facilitation. He credits his many varied courses at Aquinas (networking, varying programming languages, operating systems, database) as all being helpful in his career, as he deals with all layers of the technology involved in the application development.

	Jeff earned undergraduate degrees in both Computer Information Systems (CIS) and Mathematics at Aquinas. He is also currently enrolled in Grand Valley State University’s Master’s in CIS program part-time to further his studies.

Jenny Wawrzynczak

	The ever-expanding health industry snagged one of our outstanding graduates, Jenny (Gwinn ’08) Wawrzynczak, in 2008. Based in Verona, Wisconsin, Epic develops and customizes health care software used in hospitals and clinics. In her time at Epic, Jenny developed a new application incorporating both orders and clinical documentation. She is currently working on improving clinical documentation features of the software to enable nurses to more easily document a patient’s care.

	Jenny pursued many interests at Aquinas besides her double major in Computer Information Systems and Business Administration. She was an active member of the Aquinas Insignis (Honors) program, played on the womens’ golf team all four years, and worked part-time in the campus ITS (Information Technology Services) department. Her classroom experience gave her a practical skillset in many programming languages, analysis, and networking/operating systems skills; her experience working in ITS gave her real-world experience in a breadth of areas including programming, retrofitting, and customer service. As a senior Insignus student, Jenny planned, designed, and developed a dynamic Insignis database program from scratch to meet the needs of that program.

	Oh, yes…by the way, in all her spare time, Jenny also met the guy she would eventually marry, another Aquinas CIS graduate: Tim Wawrzynczak (’07).

Tim Wawrzynczak

	Tim Wawrzynczak, a 2007 Aquinas Computer Information Systems graduate, currently works as a Senior Software Engineer for the Soma Group. As a consultant for one of Soma’s clients, a biotech company in the Madison, Wisconsin, area, Tim is helping to develop a new application that will assist pharmaceutical and research institutions in performing liquid chromatography and related tests. Tim applied for his current job on Monster.com.

	Classroom experiences that were the most helpful for Tim’s on-the-job design & development experiences were hands-on application projects in the Systems Analysis and Database Design courses.

	At Aquinas, Tim enjoyed extracurricular pursuits, including music (he played the bass in a band), and, of course, the highest pursuit that resulted in “catching” his eventual wife, Jenny (Gwinn ’08) Wawrzynczak.