DATE: Saturday, November 22, 1997           TAG: 9711220381

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   81 lines

ODU PILOT COURSE PUSHES YOUNG MINDS TO THE LIMIT

It's no wonder Dr. William Crouch didn't do what they asked right away: Develop a program to teach the COBOL computer language. To people with little or no computer skills. Teach them to solve the Year 2000 problem.

Oh yeah, and the course can last only eight weeks.

``I can't say I laughed because of who asked me,'' said Crouch, chairman of Old Dominion University's Information Systems and Decision Sciences department. ``I didn't do anything at first. I thought, `Well, that will disappear.' ''

Then a few weeks later, the dean came back and asked how that proposal was coming? They must be serious, Crouch noted, and developed what has been dubbed - only mildly jokingly - ODU's ``COBOL boot camp.''

The recruits have just completed their second week. The program is a pilot course in ODU's proposal to develop a technology training center that annually will pump out 450 information technology workers.

The ODU program is intended to take a small bite out of a huge problem. The Information Technology Association of America hopes to use ODU's structure as a prototype for universities and colleges to stem the shortage of technology workers.

Hampton Roads businesses and institutions have 2,000 vacancies for information technology workers, Northern Virginia has 18,000 and the country has 190,000, ITAA has reported.

Those jobs will be filled one at a time. Crouch and Renee Bryan, another instructor in Crouch's department, have 11 would-be COBOL programmers in the course.

COBOL, or Common Business Oriented Language, was introduced in 1959. By now, it was supposed to be long dead.

Back in 1970, other computer science students laughed at Crouch for taking COBOL courses.

``Half the code in the world is in COBOL,'' Crouch said. ``For a dead language, it's staying around a long time.''

Now, there's a dearth of COBOL programmers. Companies, government agencies and universities have an urgent need for programmers to sift through their mainframes to look for a two-digit year code that will trip up computers when the year 2000 rolls around.

A COBOL-trained graduate of the boot camp should be able to pull down $30,000 to $35,000 a year, Crouch says. And that's in Hampton Roads - add $10,000 if the job's in the Washington area.

But first, the obstacle course. The first four weeks cover ground normally tackled during two full college semesters. The next three weeks the students work in ``the COBOL environment.''

The final week, the recruits will take software provided by local companies and try to fix it.

Classes run from 0730 to 1630.

``And I pretty much expect them to do stuff when they go home,'' Crouch said.

For this, the students - or a sponsoring group - each paid $5,000.

The university expected Crouch to use the course to achieve three things: show a demand; translate the studies into skills needed to do COBOL programming; and land jobs for most of the students.

The first was no problem: 200 people applied. Crouch checked out credentials, narrowed the field and interview them like job candidates.

``It was not the kind of people I was expecting,'' he said. ``I was expecting to see somebody who was unemployed and didn't have a job in a zillion years, didn't finish high school, and I'm supposed to turn them into programmers.''

Instead, folks like this applied:

Bill Streever, a Chesapeake resident with a Ph.D. in biochemistry, who had been working as a chemist at a medical lab.

``At the Ph.D. level, that's a dying breed,'' Streever said. ``I have some programming background and some computer background and I'm trying to find a way to bring my skills up to date.''

Jean M. Odom, a Virginia Beach woman, laid off from Maryview Medical Center after eight years as a data processor.

``What seemed to be a dead end is really an opportunity,'' Odom said.

Had Crouch known these would be his recruits, he wouldn't have hesitated when first asked to write a proposal.

Gung ho?

These students show up early for a 7:30 a.m. class. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Vicki Cronis/The Virginian-Pilot

Matt Shepheard...

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