Engineering Exec to Discuss Careers in IT Today

To conclude a yearlong lecture series titled "Executive Access: Top Engineering Professionals Share Their Work and Insight," Smith College's Picker Program in Engineering and Technology will host Alfred Grasso, senior vice president and chief information officer of MITRE Corporation. MITRE, a public interest company that partners with the government, combines systems engineering and information technology to address issues of critical national importance.

Grasso's lecture, titled "Millionaire or Just a Survivor? Careers in IT Today," will take place on Friday, April 20, from noon to 1 p.m. in the Alumnae House conference room. It is free, open to the public and wheelchair accessible. Lunch will be served.

In addition to overseeing MITRE's information technology resources, Grasso guides the company's use of information technologies in its customer programs. His professional background includes work in system integration, advanced prototyping, technology insertion and modeling and simulation. He is the former technical director for the Battlefield Systems Division at MITRE's Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, operation, a position in which he was responsible for directing aspects of the U.S. Army's Force XXI Battlefield Digitization Program. He also served MITRE as a department head for the Army Command and Control System and Army Tactical Communications.

Before joining MITRE in 1986, Grasso, a 1980 graduate of the University of Massachusetts with a master's degree from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, worked for ARINC Research Corporation and Westinghouse Electronic Corporation. He also served six years in the U.S. Air Force, in which he was responsible for Air Force ground mobile communications in support of air base defense and point air defense.

The Executive Access series has hosted several exemplars of engineering throughout the year, including Gary Downey, director of the Center for Science and Technology Studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Iwona Turlik, vice president and director of the Motorola Advanced Technology Center; and Henry Michel, chairman emeritus of Parsons Brinckerhoff Inc., the contractor for Boston's "Big Dig."

Established in 1999, Smith's engineering program is the first such program at a women's college and one of only a handful at liberal arts colleges. The first 20 students in the program entered this fall.

Contact: Marti Hobbes, mhobbes@smith.edu

April 9, 2001