KUALA LUMPUR, 8 November 2012: UCSI University School of Information Technology held its’ annual Industrial Advisory Board (IAB) meeting recently last November 8th with the agenda to review and improve the School’s programmes. 

The annual meeting was assembled in line with the School’s mission statement, which is to provide industry-relevant IT programmes, to nurture and develop competent, innovative and industry-ready graduates. 

Two key industrial players, Dr Christoph Baeck, Head of Hilti Asia IT Services Sdn. Bhd. (Hilti) and Mr Daniel Quah, Managing Director of UCSI CompuTech Sdn. Bhd. (CompuTech) joined the meeting as industrial advisors, to ensure compliance and coherence of the IT programmes and its graduates with the current industry’s requirement and development. 

UCSI University and the School of IT are currently collaborating with global company Hilti after the University signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Hilti last October. 

Dr Baeck and Mr Quah were present to assist in the review to enhance the programmes’ curriculum, in order to continue to educate and build up promising graduates, well-equipped with up-to-date IT knowledge and skills. 

Among the School’s efforts to continuously improve the standards and quality of its’ programmes, the School is committed in providing a focused curriculum for students who wish to pursue future IT career paths upon graduation. 

During the review, the School received positive feedback and comments concerning the University's graduates who are currently interning at Hilti and CompuTech as both the industrial groups have and are still hiring graduates and interns from the School. 

The students were praised for their proficient technical knowledge and skills as evaluated by the Companies. 

Meanwhile, Dr Baeck and Mr Quah also encouraged that the students' soft skills such as critical thinking, creative problem solving and communication skills to be sharpened to enhance their interpersonal skills and job performance. 

They also advised specific technical skills like networking skills and Cloud computing concept skills to be further honed among the students as these are essential and vital skills needed in the industry. 

“Overall, the valuable feedback from the industrial partners are useful and important for the advance improvement of the School's curriculum and continuous enhancement of our existing as well as newly proposed IT programmes,” enthused Ms Chloe Thong, Head of the School of IT at the University. 

The meeting with Hilti and CompuTech was indeed fruitful and productive; the School look forward to more collaboration initiatives with the industrial partners.