Concurrency piloted their Concurrency University program in June of 2014. Ingrained in that program are some of our core principles of learning and excellence. Jim Savage, our Founder and President, wanted our talented consultants to share their knowledge and train those in the program. In that same spirit, we wanted our University Program Consultants to share their knowledge and give back to our community. With these two inspirations in mind, Concurrency partnered with Washington High School of Information Technology (WHSoIT), an inner-city school with a mission for their students to succeed and with a focus on technology. It couldn’t have been a better fit for both WHSoIT and Concurrency.
Each group of University Consultants were required to participate in WHSoIT’s iFair. The iFair, in essence, is a reverse job fair. Students are bused in from around Milwaukee to attend. Business partners set up booths with interactive activities, in addition to some hosting hands-on workshops, where all students have the opportunity to participate. They are there to find out why IT is a great career field to enter, ask questions about IT, and have thought provoking IT experiences.
Concurrency University Consultants have participated five times so far, including their spring and fall iFairs. We have had booths at each of these events, and hosted several workshops. Our booth activities have ranged from a self-created flappy bird game, to virtual reality, to power BI, to our latest - which was themed “Keep your head in the Cloud”. The iFair students have also loved our hosted workshops where they were able to rebuild computers that were taken apart and one where they had to figure out how encryption works.
Sal Montini, a summer 2015 University Program graduate, continues to participate in every iFair. Additionally, the school has a mentorship program, in which Sal and a group of our University Consultants, spent a day engaged in career cruising sessions, a career research tool. Sal’s passion for the students and technology are visible through his actions and involvement.
Over the last year, Concurrency has become more and more involved with other STEM school programs. A group of our consultants mentored four High School students that were completing a technology challenge, “Innovation in Technology”, as part of New Berlin School District’s Advanced Innovation and Design (AID) Program.
Concurrency will also be hosting a team of students in the fall, through the Elmbrook School District’s LAUNCH program. It is a project and profession based learning program, where we will again mentor a group of High School junior and senior students. Consultants from our Modern IT Management team will lead this group on an authentic business challenge project.
In addition to our University Program, we have successfully brought on interns over the years. We are looking at creating a formalized program, like our University Program. This summer we have college level interns in our Marketing group, our Data Science Solution, and CRM Solution. We have also brought on a summer High School intern, that came from the New Berlin AID project team we mentored.
As technology has woven into all facets of our lives, we see our youth having literally grown up with it from day one. You will see two-year old’s that don’t even know how to read, using their mother’s smart phones. Our youth are intelligent and innovative with technology, and are our creative inspiration for the next generation of technology advances. Concurrency is excited to be working with these energy and idea filled students, not only to mentor them, but hopefully to hire them onto our talented teams and help find and create opportunities for them to soar with their “head in the cloud”!