Two Opportunities for Assistance from Binghamton University

Opportunity #1
Cindy Blackman, an instructor in the Fine Arts Dept., is interested in giving her students opportunities to apply what they are learning in real-world settings. She teaches a class in graphic arts, among others. Her students may be available to help develop logos, work on providing extra enhancements to web pages, tshirt design development, marketing, posters, and other related types of projects. If interested, please contact Cindy at: blackman@binghamton.edu


Opportunity #2
Dear friend,

I am contacting you to alert you to a unique opportunity that is available to your organization. It is possible for you to obtain, without charge, about 320-350 hrs. of work related to the use of Information Technology (IT) within your organization (e.g., IT planning, development, implementation, and evaluation). Specifically, I direct a course titled “Information Systems Project” to undergraduate and graduate MIS students. The course is applied in nature in that teams of students (about 3 students per team) work throughout the course on a project that a sponsoring organization assigns to them. Both the students and the sponsoring organizations gain a lot from the work that students do in this course.

I would like to offer your organization the chance to participate in our program. What I am looking from you (or another senior manager in your organization) is a project that begins during the last week of January 2011 and requires about 12 weeks (about 3 months) to complete. The project should have a clear sponsor who is willing to devote time to this project.

To help me plan my course, I would like the project sponsor to first send me an email ASAP saying that s/he would be submitting a proposal. Then by Wed, January 19th, 2011, the sponsor should send me a brief (15 - 20 lines) statement that contains the following about the project:

1. What is the problem that you are facing?
2. What solution are you expecting? (e.g., a web-based database application) What should this solution do for you?
3. What work do you want the student team to accomplish for you? Do you expect them to work on-site or off-site?
4. Within how much time do you expect the students to accomplish their work?
5. What qualities would you like to see in the students who are assigned to your project?
6. What resources (amount of time per week, funds, etc.) can you expect to allocate to support the work done by the student team?
7. Who will be the primary contact for the student team? Please give the phone number, e-mail, and address of the primary contact person.

You should feel free to contact me at kahai@binghamton.edu if you have any questions. If your proposal is selected, anticipate a first meeting with the students during the last week of Jan 2011.

I would appreciate if you could distribute this letter to others who might be interested in receiving IT help from my students. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Surinder Kahai
Kahai@binghamton.edu