Spotlight on Angelo Corridori
Angelo Corridori
Professional Lecturer of Computer Science
Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York, USA
Angelo Corridori is the Director of Large Systems Education at Marist College.
Revitalizing education in Enterprise Computing
After a successful career designing and developing mainframe systems and 25 years of teaching at the community college level, Angelo Corridori was a natural fit to teach enterprise computing courses at Marist College. But, when he joined the Marist faculty in 2007, he found that there was a shortage of available academic resources for this discipline. Now, thanks to his dedication and innovation, this is no longer the case!
Angelo quickly joined forces with the IBM System z Academic Initiative team, became an Academic Initiative member, and began developing courseware to use in his own classroom and to share with other schools. His contributions have been a important factor in the growth of the System z Academic Initiative program, which now has more than 1000 participating faculty members.
Spreading the news
At the request of IBM, Angelo has led several "Teach the Teacher" sessions, helping many other professors from colleges and universities worldwide learn how to teach the z/OS courses available through the Academic Initiative. He has also given presentations about the Marist program at the SHARE conferences and to the IBM Academic Affiliates. Angelo has been an enthusiastic supporter of the IBM Master the Mainframe Contest, encouraging all his students to participate. At least one of his students was in the final five in 2009.
Going beyond the classroom
As the Director of Large Systems Education at Marist College, Angelo has worked extensively with IBM to develop a robust online certificate program focused on enterprise computing and z/OS. He has developed 17 courses, arranged in seven certificates, that cover key Systems Programming and Application Development areas for Systems z. Nine of the classes have been approved for undergraduate credit and are offered to Marist undergraduate students, as well as working professionals from all over the world, through the Marist Institute for Data Center Professionals (IDCP).
In 2009, Marist received a $400,000 two-year grant from the National Science Foundation that jump-started their revitalization of enterprise computing. Angelo was one of the principal investigators for this grant. Working with leaders in industry and academia, Angelo helped Marist develop the Enterprise Computing Community (ECC), which ensures that the core curriculum for Computer Science and Information Technology majors includes enterprise computing concepts. The ECC now has over 800 members and annually hosts an online forum and a 3-day conference with worldwide attendance. As part of the IDCP, Angelo formed the Marist z/OS Joint Advisory Board with members from IBM and 25 IBM customers who help guide the content of the Marist program.
Results
Leadership like this does not go unnoticed. In 2008 and 2010, Angelo received an IBM Faculty Award for his outstanding reputation and contributions to his field. The students that take the classes are impressed with the breadth and depth of the certificate program materials. They especially like the hands-on labs, some of which provide the student with access to their own copy of z/OS as a second-level system. Most importantly, Marist students, even those that have taken only one Enterprise Computing class, are constantly sought after for internships and full-time positions in organizations that use Enterprise Computing.