One of the most important reasons for any college course is real-world application. Juniata offers several courses in varying fields that have a direct real-world influence as part of their curriculum. Recently I sat down with Juniata senior, Andrew Murdock, to discuss his involvement with just such a course, known as I4I.

What is I4I? How did you get involved?
I4I stands for innovations for industry and it is a project based IT class that juniors and seniors take. We actually take it over the course of three semesters and each semester you get a new project and the goal of it is to create innovate solutions for real-world clients, so instead of doing a project and turning it into a professor when it’s done, you’re working for a business or a department to make something useful for them and their environment.

How does one get involved? Do you have to be an IT student?
The prerequisite is IT 210, so any IT majors will take it three times. Sometimes computer science majors will take it. Business POEs can take it. If you have any interest in business and technology you can take it, but the prerequisite is IT 210.

What projects have you worked on while taking I4I?
My first semester, I worked for the TIU developing an interactive teaching and technology alignment web application. The goal of the project was to allow teachers to input ways that they use technology and comment on whether it worked well or not. The idea was that other teachers could go in with search features and other easy ways to find connections between what they were teaching and how they could use technology. The second semester I worked for the Acohol Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau and we worked to develop a virtualized test lab so that the ATTB could test new servers and operating systems before they put them into their production environment. It was an interesting project because we never actually worked at the ATTB. We worked remotely from the college. It was very real-world working in the modern IT world but it also had its challenges of long distance communication. This semester I am working on an in-house project with the college and specifically the conferences and events office and we are developing a digital signage solution. They’re televisions set up around campus displaying events, sports scores and to help direct guests throughout the campus. It’s sort of a 21st century in-your-face marketing system.

What would you say to people interested in getting involved with I4I?
I would recommend it to people who have an interest in technology and say that it’s a good way to jump into a better interest. There’s a lot of aspects to the course for people who are maybe on the edge of deciding what they want to do. It’s a good course in a lot of different ways.

-Dan Endres ’13, Juniata online journalist