6/19/07

Story by Julie Haas

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. – Johnson County Community College has been selected by IDG’s Computerworld, the “Voice of IT Management,” as one of the top workplaces for information technology (IT) professionals.  This honor is part of the weekly IT publication’s 14th annual Best Places to Work in IT survey, which was published in the June 18 issue of Computerworld and online at Computerworld.com.

Since 1994, Computerworld’s annual “Best Places to Work in IT” feature has ranked the top 100 work environments for technology professionals, based on a comprehensive questionnaire regarding company offerings in categories such as benefits, diversity, career development, training and retention. In addition, this year Computerworld surveyed IT workers for the list, and their responses factored heavily in determining the rankings.

“We are fortunate to work in one of the best community colleges in the country,” said Wayne Brown, JCCC’s chief information officer. “We have a very mission-driven group of IT professionals who are committed to the college and our students, faculty and staff. The college community recognizes the power of technology to improve processes for the good of our constituents, and the IT department has done an outstanding job of implementing changes that benefit the college. All of these things have come together to make JCCC an outstanding place to work in IT.”

JCCC has 95 IT staff members.

JCCC was ranked 47^th in the Best Places to Work listings. Three other companies from the Kansas City area also made the list – American Century (ranked 26), Cerner Corp. (ranked 59) and Kansas City Power and Light (ranked 82). Eight educational institutions, including the University of Miami, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT, were listed; JCCC and Miami Dade College, Miami (ranked 65), were the only community colleges to be listed.

“This year’s Best Places to Work rankings represent companies across the industry that recognize how a strong commitment to and investment in employees is synonymous with creating a great IT work environment,” said Don Tennant, editor in chief of Computerworld. “Once again, we found that IT professionals are looking for rewarding and challenging projects, access to leading-edge technologies, career growth and development and a comfortable work/life balance. Our Best Places companies not only offer these benefits, but do so in a manner that goes well above industry norms.”  

Computerworld is the leading source of technology news and information for IT influencers worldwide. Computerworld’s award-winning weekly publication, Computerworld.com Web site (www.computerworld.com), focused conference series and custom research form the hub of the world’s largest (40+ edition) global IT media network. In the past five years alone, Computerworld has won more than 100 awards, including Folio Magazine's 2006 Gold EDDIE Award for the best technology/computing magazine, the 2004 and 2006 Magazine of the Year Award, and 2006 Best Overall Web Publication from the American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE). Computerworld leads the industry with a print audience of 1,252,000 readers each week (IntelliQuest CIMS Spring 2006) and an online audience of over 2 million unique monthly visitors (Omniture).

Additional information about IDG, a privately held company, is available at http://www.idg.com.