Opportunities Close to Home with Haley Baker
Haley Baker is an Athens native and graduated from OU in 2015 with a degree in ITS, a concentration in management, and dual minors in business administration and music. She currently works for the Parkersburg Bureau of Fiscal Services as an Identity Management Engineer.
Growing up, Baker always had a passion for music, attending piano and voice lessons from a young age to set herself up for a career in music. Baker was determined to become a music major and enrolled in the School of Music, focusing on opera performance. Throughout her freshman year, Baker realized that music had a narrow job landscape and that she had two routes to choose from: education or therapy. As she works better remotely, Baker opened up to the idea of changing majors.
Before freshman year, Baker started as a sales associate at Bobcat Depot and met soon-to-be friends and ITS upperclassmen. As she began to look for other majors, they recommended that she enroll in the McClure School because of the experience she gained at the on-campus tech store. Baker wanted to keep her options open and took a telecommunications course with ITS professor Trevor Roycroft.
“That was kind of opening the can of worms on me getting into a more technical field. I really enjoyed that class, and I wanted to know more,” says Baker.
Baker was also a commuter student and found it difficult to begin her ITS journey after her classmates already made connections during their first year in the ITS program. On top of that, for high schoolers in the Athens area in the late 2000s, there were limited computer-focused classes offered. Her introduction to ITS really began sophomore year while her classmates had previous experience in vocational schools and courses offered in their high schools.
“I had to work a little bit harder than that because I didn't have the benefit of being there like most [students], but overall, everybody was really nice,” says Baker. “It was really nice to be in classroom environments where everybody was just very open, and even the professors were very approachable.”
Baker’s transition from the School of Music to the J. Warren McClure School of Emerging Communication Technologies was a major undertaking because she switched from knowing everything about music to building a foundational knowledge of ITS in the McClure School’s rigorous courses. While the ITS program is an undertaking for those with previous experience, coworkers from Bobcat Depot guided Baker through the courses they had previously taken.
Networking in the McClure School is an important factor in future job searches, and with connections in the local area, Baker utilized this to find post-grad opportunities. Baker knew it was essential to get her name out there and because she aspired to remain in the Athens area, she sought out nearby options. She found her first position after graduation as a Security Analyst at OU when she began strategically networking with OU’s Head of Security.
“I do think truly that one of the most important things you can do as far as getting your career started and continuing to move [up] is making those connections with people,” says Baker. “It is so important to know people [and] keep in touch with folks.”
Baker found her current position at the Parkersburg Bureau of Fiscal Services through an old coworker at Bobcat Depot who hyped up the workplace and engineer position. Baker again had to make another transition from working for higher education to the government, but it was one she wanted to do in order to deepen her knowledge of ITS.
“I wanted to know more. There's only so much that you can learn in one particular position anywhere,” says Baker. “I just wanted to have more experiences [and] see how things are done elsewhere.”
The ITS program prepares students for an array of job opportunities which means it focuses on helping students build foundational knowledge of different areas in the field. Some students might even feel unprepared to enter certain positions in the ITS field, but the McClure School assures students have the basic building blocks to enter any position for any company.
“Looking back, now that I’ve been out [of college] for seven years, I can very clearly make the connections to things that I learned when I was in college that I was too close to at the time to see,” says Baker.
But foundational knowledge can only take you so far and once ITS students enter specific jobs that fit their interests, it is vital to understand the intricacies of what that job entails. Education is just as powerful as learning from coworkers in the field and asking questions is the perfect way for young ITS employees to continue to grow in their careers.
“I've seen people ask a question to be given the answer that didn't sit right with them because they didn't understand the full thing,” says Baker. “You asked them because you respected them as somebody that should know the answer so take what they've told you and learn more about it.”
The McClure School of Emerging Communication Technologies strives to offer the best academic programs in the IT (Information Technology)(opens in a new window), the game development and the Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality(opens in a new window) (VR/AR) industries. Our programs and certificates cover numerous aspects of the rapidly changing industries of information networking, cybersecurity(opens in a new window), data privacy, game development(opens in a new window), digital animation and the academic side of esports.