Tech MSU Team takes High Honors

Contact: Ashley Horn – 2008 Murray State University News Bureau 429 Sparks Hall Murray, KY 42071 (270) 809-3156 MURRAY, Ky., April 1 — The success of Murray State University’s master’s program in Telecommunication Systems Management (TSM) Program of Distinction is proving that education in the age of the Internet has no boundaries. According to the Murray State website, the TSM master’s program began in 1998 and is Kentucky’s only Program of Distinction of its kind. The program is completely online and enrolls students from all over the world — China, Japan and Saudi Arabia as well as countries in Central America, Africa and Europe. George Rice, visiting associate professor at Murray State, has helped develop and teach both undergraduate and graduate TSM courses. Rice explained how the program became such an international success, saying, “The wonderful ‘World Wide Web’ makes our website available to international students.” The fact that MSU has had impressive international enrollment numbers has also impacted awareness of the university and the program, Rice added. The students interact in groups via email and Blackboard. Each student has his or her own chat file and email exchange which makes communication and completing tasks simple. Students from the TSM master’s program competed in the International Telecommunications Education and Research Association’s (ITERA) student case competition in Louisville, Ky., last weekend. Murray State’s students were awarded first place in the ITERA National Student Case Study Competition. This year’s case study, Cool U, gave students the opportunity to create a state-of-the-art university based on cutting edge communications technology. Graduate students Clarissa Hill and John Shaudt presented the team’s solution for Cool U during the conference. Master’s program student Jon Cargill attended the conference via video conferencing software. He currently lives in Scotland. The four-person team, including grad student Chris Simonavice, won $1,500 to split among the team and a trophy for Murray State. The students worked on their project together using the same video conferencing technology. This is the second consecutive year that the Murray student team has won the competition. Last year a two-student team won what was the first national competition, beating out larger universities such as James Madison University and Ball State University. The case study in 2007 was the development of a leading communications crisis plan for a fictional town called Crisis, Fla., where communications breakdowns replicated many of the problems found during Hurricane Katrina. Telecommunications Systems Management is a growing field and job expectancy is high. “TSM graduates have gone to work in the U.S. and in some foreign countries for banks, insurance companies, technology companies, governmental agencies and universities,” Rice explained. The job descriptions for these fields vary and the demand for TSM professionals continues to grow as technology and electronic capabilities advance.