Published: April 14, 2016
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A recently renovated lab is giving graduates of the Interdisciplinary Telecom Program (ITP) a competitive edge.

The lab provides students access to state-of-the-art, enterprise-grade networking equipment, allowing them to combine theory with extensive hands-on experience. And the lab is paying dividends for the more than 3,000 students who have completed the program since 1971.

In 2015, with strong demand for well-rounded telecom employees, the employment rate of graduates was 100 percent with an average salary of $80,000. ITP has strengthened its engagement with industry partners to increase student internships and employment.

ITP offers master’s and doctoral degrees and has grown to include five-year BS/MS programs in partnership with the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering and the Department of Computer Science.

This year, the curriculum evolved to include four new focus areas: wireless, network security, network engineering, and telecom policy and strategy. Each specialty incorporates courses in law, policy and business combined with a technology focus to create an interdisciplinary engineering program that is cutting-edge.

The vision of ITP is to build a comprehensive research program, augment graduate level faculty and fund incoming doctoral candidates with teaching assistant fellowships. ITP students are industry’s future employees and they’re unstoppable in the marketplace. Â