BernieNewman is Director of Software Engineering at Astronautics Corporation of Americawhere he oversees all of the aspects of software development in the company.

Duringhis career he was engaged in software design and verification activities withincreasing roles of responsibility from team member, to team leader, tosoftware architect for over 12 years. He became a department supervisor and,with growth in the software department, ultimately became department managerand finally director.

Associatedwith MSOE
Mr. Newmanhas been associated personally with MSOE actively since early 2008, as a memberof the Industry Advisory Committee. Astronautics Corporation of America has alsobeen associated with MSOE for many years, including membership on theElectrical Engineering Industry Advisory Committee. The company's founder,Nathaniel Zelazo, is a Regent Emeritus and past Member of Corporation of MSOEsince 1980, and received an honorary doctorate from MSOE.

Mr. Newmanhas hosted students and staff at meetings at AstronauticsCorporation of Americaheadquarters, and met with students for informal discussions. He arranged tosend volunteer judges to the 2008 Bug Stomp, attended the event and secured a majorpart of the event sponsorship.

Mr.Newman's advice for students
Devote anequal amount of attention to software verification as you do to design. Learnto practice "ego-less" programming, where you seek to disassociate your ownpersonality from the code that you are producing. Attend as many Englishwriting and communications classes as possible; effective writtencommunications is essential.

The SoftwareEngineering program has been well planned to address all aspects of softwaredevelopment as it is actually practiced, or should be practiced, in theworkplace. The program will get you well prepared to be productive in as shorta time as possible when you start your first job.

Gary Parker is a QA Architect for Compuware Corporation. Inthis role he helps IT organizations improve their development process, lowersoftware failure rates and improve software life cycle times. He began hiscareer as a programmer/analyst and migrated toward software verification andvalidation.

MSOE involvement
Mr. Parker has been a member of the SE IAC since 1998.

Advice for students
There are a lot of different areas of IT other than softwaredevelopment. Do not hesitate to explore them as you may find something youreally enjoy. If you are considering IT as a profession you couldn't find abetter university with a curriculum that gives you a broad base ofunderstanding and skills from which to build a career.

Travis Piotrowski '91 is the Director of Solution Architecture at Northwestern Mutual where he is responsible directing an organization of solution architects who work within the various business units to transform business problems and opportunities into feasible and comprehensive solutions enabled by technology.

He started out as a developer working on the mainframe then moved to a software engineer role for several n-tier systems. This eventually became a team lead over the engineering competency center and later turned into managing an Infrastructure team.    His previous software engineering and managerial experience enabled him to take on his current role as the director of solution architecture.

MSOE involvement
Mr. Piotrowski graduated from MSOE in 1991 with a BA in Computers & Business.  He has been a member of the SE IAC since 2005.

Advice for students
Never stop learning, be an active reader, and listen more than you talk.  The soft skills are often more important than the technical skills if you want to advance your career.  MSOE graduates are the most prepared and well rounded students we hire.   If you want to stand out from the crowd after graduation, choose MSOE.