One of the largest software companies in the world has named Delaware State University a “center of excellence,” which means faculty from other historically black colleges and universities all over the country will come to Dover to train in state-of-the art business enterprise software.
Educators say the initiative will give students a marketable job skill, while employers hope to gain a better-trained, more diverse workforce.
SAP SE is an international corporation that makes software to help businesses do everything from track sales orders to maintain human resources records to compile “big data” to measure their performance. It is the second-largest software company in the world, behind Microsoft, and is number one in business analytics software, according to Brian Reaves, a senior vice president.
DSU students and faculty will get training in the latest SAP products thanks to Project Propel, a joint project between DSU, SAP and the Americas’ SAP Users’ Group, made up of companies that use the software.
“This is going to give our students a massive advantage in their career applications,” said Donna Covington, dean of the College of Business. “Some of the biggest companies in the world work in the SAP ecosystem, and it will be a valuable skill to know how to work in it.”
Covington also says DSU faculty will be able to stay on the cutting edge of the industry, whether it’s business professors understanding the software’s applications in industry to computer science professors diving into the coding and developing applications on the company’s platforms.
Because it is named the “center of excellence,” DSU will become a hub to which other universities will send faculty for training.
“DSU is going to be the center of an effort to improve [historically black colleges and university] students’ access to technology,” Covington said. “It’s a big, big honor for us.”
The reason why SAP and the businesses that use its software are working with DSU is simple. They need more employees who know the ins and outs of the software to keep their operations running smoothly.
“The feedback we’ve been getting from these companies is that they spending way too much time training employees in these skills,” said Praveen Pinjani, a professor of information systems. “Students with analytics skills are being sucked up as soon as they’re available to be hired.”
By working with HBCUs like Delaware State, the companies also can get a more diverse group of employees with right skills. Project Propel is tied to SAP’s Black Employee Network, designed to help boost recruitment, retention and promotion for African American employees.
“We look forward to connecting our community to talented graduates of HBCUs skilled in these areas,” said user group CEO Geoff Scott.
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