“How many of you are sitting in this classroom because someone told you if you will take this class, you will have a job after college?” were the first words out of Professor Kale’s mouth in ITP 320, also known as Enterprise Information Systems. Now “Information Systems” (also the name of my concentration within Industrial and Systems Engineering) is incredibly broad but basically entails organizing and manipulating systems, where systems can be anything from computers, to data, to money, to people. As part of my major, I need to take a certain number of units of “tech electives” or basically fun classes that involve technology like mobile app development or computer security. I chose to take Enterprise Information Systems because it teaches a computer program called SAP. SAP is used in almost all major companies (like Coca-Cola, Target, Amazon, and even USC) to organize a variety of information such as finance and human resources, but I was curious about it because my mom is an SAP consultant for Apple and I never quite understood what she does all day.
And so Professor Kale continues and says “Yes, it is true,” and that SAP is an extremely applicable skill to know and that most graduates that are hired for consulting have to learn SAP on the job, but that by taking classes in the software, we will have a massive advantage. I investigated for myself and checked the online description and sure enough, “Findings show that the greater number of SAP/R3 classes that college graduates have taken, the higher salary differential, which ranges from $5K to $10K” which is pretty awesome!! And SAP has a special partnership with USC that allows us to use their software which is rare for a college to have. Professor Kale also takes time to highlight every week important concepts to understand and keywords to put in our resumes to help us get hired.
Besides how much the class will help me out after college and to get internships, it’s super interesting! All of our homeworks involve simulations of the real world like creating account orders, tracing shipments, and warehouse optimization. I’m really looking forward to learning more about SAP… and being able to clearly tell people what my mom does every day.
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