Taking Care of Business
With a focus on technology and impressive real-world experience, Oscar Gutierrez is taking Bay State College’s Business department to a whole new level.
Oscar Gutierrez, BS, MS, PhD, trained as a computer programmer and systems analyst, and was named chair of Bay State College’s Business department in July 2018. We spoke with him about his work, the challenges students face, and what the future holds.
Bay State College: Outside of your work as a professor, can you tell us what you do?
Oscar Gutierrez: I like photography. I take pictures of small objects, flowers for example, and make them really, really large.
BSC: What accomplishments are you most proud of?
OG: In the early 2000s we were doing a project to collect information about who was using the shelter system in the city of Boston. The Department of Housing and Urban Development found out about our initiative and hired us to develop a model that could be used across the United States. To this day there are 450 jurisdictions using this system that we proposed that they use.
BSC: Who has influenced your work in life?
OG: My dad gave me a sense of responsibility and empathy towards people, and I have an uncle who worked with computers much earlier than me and became very well-known in the field of airline reservation systems.
BSC: Was there a moment when you knew that business and information systems was going to be what you did?
OG: Very early I knew that I wanted to be in this field. I loved the technology, I loved what I was learning.
BSC: What advice would you give your younger self about working in business and technology?
OG: The best advice that I can give a young person is to persevere—don’t give up. Just stay with it and trust yourself, because you will be able to do it.
BSC: What is one thing that you hope your students learn from you?
OG: What I want for my students is to instill in them the enthusiasm that I have for my career, that when they finish their course with me, they say, ‘I want to do this.’
BSC: You're at a party, and someone asks you what you do for a living. How do you answer?
OG: I say I'm an information systems professional, and I happen to be in education, to pass along what I know to students.
BSC: What are the biggest challenges and opportunities facing your industry right now?
OG: We need to do a much better job of aligning our educational programs with the needs of industry. We need to be much more pragmatic, much more in tune with the dynamic changes of the various fields of study. The world is changing rapidly, so we need to move as fast as the real world.
BSC: What are the challenges and opportunities facing students entering the business and information systems industries?
OG: The challenge for students is to learn by themselves. Especially in business and information technology, things change so much that what you learned two years ago may not be even relevant in some contexts. So today’s students need to accept the responsibility for their own learning.
BSC: What is something that your students might be surprised to learn about you?
OG: My sedentary life would definitely be a surprise to some of my students. When I’m in class, they probably get the impression that I'm constantly moving. But sometimes I just like to relax.