WEBMASTER SPINS

By Diana Kunde
Dallas Morning News
September 27, 1998

DALLAS -- Jodie Gayton is a typical 19-year-old student at El Centro Community College with one difference. Gayton already has snagged a job in her career field, less than halfway through a two-year curriculum in Internet publishing, training and commerce technology.

She works for Universal Internet Solutions in Deep Ellum, Texas, creating Web sites for corporate clients such as Premier Wood Floors and Traffic Zone.

"It's always changing. It's never boring," Gayton said of her work.

With Internet use exploding, there's a shortage of folks who can create, maintain and use Web sites to the best business advantage. Now colleges and training firms around the country are rushing to fill the skills gap.

Dallas' El Centro, which offers a three-semester basic certificate in Internet technologies and a four-semester advanced certificate, is an early contender. The school started with a digital imaging curriculum in 1997, then tweaked it this year to focus more sharply on the emerging commerce on the Web.

"We teach people to be functioning members of Webmaster teams," said Ed Grundy, program director for the Internet curriculum. "It's an exciting area. You see the fire in the students' eyes."

Firms such as Novell and Microsoft have added Internet components to their training. Four-year colleges such as Penn State University are getting into the act.

Even a few graduate schools of business are adding concentrations in electronic commerce, preparing MBA grads for managerial posts in marketing, for instance. Vanderbilt University's Owen School of Management in Tennessee, a pioneer, will graduate 48 MBAs with the specialty in 1999.

Graduates will enter a promising job market, say the folks charged with recruiting people to staff Internet-related positions.

"Everyone has the exact same pain. We have to go through 50 interviews to find a couple of decent people," said John Pozadzides, business sales manager for GTE's Internet products and services.

Consider: In 1989, fewer than 90,000 people were on-line. By 1998, that number has grown to 51 million in the United States alone, with 100 million expected by 2003, according to Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. Business-to-business commerce via the Internet will reach $327 billion by 2002, Forrester projects.

Most of this growth has come in the last five years, since the emergence of the World Wide Web, which suddenly made it infinitely easier to use the Internet.

"As far as being a viable industry where people are needed, it's only about 3 years old, since about '95. You didn't hear a whole lot about it until then," said Brian Harshaw, program manager for on-line marketing in Sprint's business services group.

Salaries are rising along with demand, although it's difficult to make comparisons in a field so new that job titles are in flux. The term Webmaster, for instance, can refer to anyone from a technical designer to a vice president.

A recent survey by Internet World of Fortune 500 companies found 50 percent of Webmasters earning between $45,000 and $65,000 a year. Eighty-four percent made at least $45,000, and 10 percent earned upwards of $95,000.

As Web sites become more complex, offering more features, they're being staffed by teams of people ranging from designers, writers and trainers to programmers and administrators of the systems that make them work.

"The title of Webmaster is getting a little long in the tooth," said Grundy of El Centro. "Because the teams are multidisciplinary, one of our aims is to expose students to all the technologies on the Web."

Courses range from writing for interactive publishing to digital animation and Web-based marketing, among others. Advanced certificate courses include Web site maintenance and Internet scripting languages.

Virtually all faculty was recruited directly from the industry to teach part time. Pozadzides of GTE and Harshaw of Sprint are among them.

"Ed called me up and said, `Look, we need to get leaders in our community involved in helping produce more high-quality applicants,' " said Pozadzides, who teaches Web site production techniques.

Community colleges might have an edge in reaching the Webmaster market because they offer relatively short-term training, Harshaw said. "They get the people trained and into the marketplace. There's such a demand they may be able to forgo the four-year degree or do it concurrently," he said.

Gayton, the 19-year-old Webmaster, plans to complete her two-year certificate while working, then get into more advanced programming. "I've finally found my niche, you know," she said.

Ginnie Minnett already has a bachelor's degree in psychology. She was working as a cocktail waitress when her father nagged her into looking at computer-related studies. She got hooked on El Centro's Internet program and now is looking for an internship to supplant the waitress work.

"It's so new," she said. "It's really cool to see how it unravels."

Tony Barajas, 25, was going for a traditional science and engineering degree when he found that El Centro was teaching Web-based technologies. "So I took a class. Now, I'm taking the whole program," he said.

Not all students are looking for careers on the Web. Some professionals are finding that they need to learn more about it to stay current. Linda Wise, a Dallas attorney in private practice, is taking classes such as 2-D animation because she believes the Web will play a large part in the future of law.

"As you do more and more commerce over the Internet and more issues come up, there's a need for people to be in the middle between those who speak computerese and those who speak lawyerese," she said.

No matter how they're trained, it's most important for newly minted Internet experts to understand that learning doesn't stop, said Mitchell Ahern, chairman of the Association of Internet Professionals.

"There's a lot of validity to doing a relatively quick, intensive study program. That will certainly help prepare you," he said. "What I've discovered is that the industry is moving so rapidly, the most important thing for anyone to understand is that it has to be an ongoing process."