Engage. Educate. Enable.
That’s the true north statement and teaching philosophy of Dr. John Muraski, instructor for UW Online Collaboratives’ Master of Science in Information Technology Management program.
John is an industry expert in project management who has found his calling in higher education. He spent 20 years working in industry before joining UW Oshkosh, including 10 years at Schneider National, roughly four years with Associated Bank, and running and managing his own consulting firm for about six years.
“It was in the project management and strategic planning space,” he says of his own business. “We worked with Fortune 100 and 500 organizations across the Midwest; and lots of companies across northeast Wisconsin.”
John, who has always been a project manager at heart, says his work “was really about project management, project rescues, and projects that were just [going down in] flames and needed to be rescued or ended. We helped them manage projects and build project management capabilities.”
While helping a local Green Bay company with strategic planning, John went home and thought, “What’s my true north statement?” He realized that he couldn’t achieve his philosophy of engaging, educating and enabling by staying at his organization, where he was focused on leading consulting teams and sales. And within 30 days, he left the organization and transitioned into higher education.
“I couldn’t do those core values of what I found really exciting and fun,” he says.
He started teaching part-time at UW Oshkosh, and worked his way through a second master’s degree. Ultimately, he completed his doctorate at UW-Whitewater through a weekend program and has been building on his research and work with students at UW Oshkosh ever since.
“I get to live my ‘engage, educate and enable’ every day,” he says. “[The ITM program] is amazing. It was really designed to help folks enter the IT space, or help those in the department advance their careers. It has the right blend of both business and technology and covers all aspects of the IT department from the technical coding, the business analysis, project management, and security. It covers what a future leader is going to need to know to move up and across the organization. I think it’s a great program.”
John teaches ITM 735: Business Analysis and System Development, which largely focuses on project management. Business analysts drive organizational change; aligning solutions to business goals. They anticipate organizational needs and go through the process of discovery, planning and execution.
“In a smaller organization, a project manager or a business analyst really does both roles,” John says. “As the organization grows in size and maturity, those roles become separate. Our ITM program approaches them as separate jobs. We teach business analysis, and we teach project management.”
Every organization does two things: ongoing operations and projects, according to John. Projects involve transforming the organization to start, stop, or change something they’re doing daily. Business analysis is important to understand business and stakeholder needs and to ultimately deliver the results that meet those needs.
One of the many strengths of the ITM program is that there’s a diverse mix of students with varying levels of experience and not all have worked in IT. Some are programmers or are in senior leadership, while others are working on technology projects. Many decide to get their master’s degrees to advance their career, as IT is typically the highest paid unit within an organization.
“Let’s say there’s 100 people in the IT department,” John says. “Ten of them are coders. If we just focus on programming, you can make a great career, but if you understand how it works, all the different roles within it, you can move up in the organization very quickly.”
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John has been teaching online since before COVID, which he says is “weird, because I’m the most extroverted person you will ever meet. But I love teaching online.”
In his class, he expects that students work as a team and communicate each week.
“My team projects are not designed so that you can just take the thing and split it up into four,” he explains. “You have to spend time talking to others…Those teams that I hear from at the end of class say, ‘Boy, I really built a relationship with these three other people.’”
He also engages students through video.
“You’re required to do a video introduction about yourself, your interest, kind of where you are, and a fun two truths and a lie,” he says. “Where we ironically, try to find the best liar.”
Durable skills like business writing are also a focus.
“There’s no academic writing in my course. A paper’s not going to help you. Let’s develop our writing skills; our applied writing skills. You’re going to learn how to write a business memo…[communications] you use in your workplace.”
For those without a coding or technical background who are wondering whether ITM is a good fit, John says not to discount the comfort they already have with technology. There are a couple of coding classes in the program, but the purpose of the master’s degree isn’t to become a coder. It’s to learn how to use technology to solve business problems.
“I think one of the greatest aspects of what we miss in the program is career changers,” John says. “Let’s go back to my origin story. In my first five years at Schneider National, I worked in business. I happen to be really good with business processes, so I led a couple of different teams. It was ‘come in and fix this team, update process, come in, fix this team, update process.’ Five years into my career I had gotten to the point where I had eliminated my job, which was kind of a thing I like to do. I got tapped on the shoulder by the CIO, who later became the CEO, who said he wanted to talk to me about joining IT. They were in the process of recruiting three people out of the business function to join the IT team to better integrate business understanding into IT. Their argument was that we can teach anyone to do IT, but we’re specifically targeting three people to become analysts and project managers to lead some different efforts to solve business problems in IT. I was hooked and never turned back from there.”
John loves being an instructor because of his commitment to public service. He enjoys giving back, and in addition to his job at UW Oshkosh, he also serves as an elected Trustee for the Village of Howard, Wis.
“I try to engage with students when I see someone needs a little help. They’re going through a job change. Or they’re looking to transition in a technical career. I will typically try to reach out to that student to have a one-on-one in person or virtual discussion with them where I can learn a little bit more about them and maybe offer them some advice.”
“I’m not just here as a teacher,” John adds. “I am here to do service, to help people be successful. I don’t have all the answers. I’m here to help them learn and explore together so that they can improve their knowledge and skills and how they think about problems. I really care about your success.”
Do you enjoy working with technology and want to advance your career? Learn more about the 100 percent online UW Master of Science in IT Management by exploring the program’s curriculum or contacting an enrollment adviser. For more information, call 608-800-6762 or email learn@uwex.wisconsin.edu.