College of Information Technology
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This website is for archival purposes only. The College of Information Technology IS NO LONGER OPERATING!!!
While working at Software Education of America in Brea, I met a gentleman by the name of Mohammad Badarudin whose brother, Mohammad Qamarudin wanted to invest in creating a technical training school in Fullerton. We met one night for dinner and they asked if I would be interested in becoming their General Manager for the new training center. I had always wanted to open my own technical training school and the timing was right, so I agreed and we began the planning stages. I was able to obtain the domain name "College of Information Technology" (CIT for short); designed a logo; and printed us up some business cards and we were off and running.
We made a deal with Gateway computers to purchase 50 desktop computers and began setting up the network infrastructure for the school. Running on a 100MBPS Ethernet network and an ADSL router for Internet Access I started working on a Website and advertisements to attract customers to enroll in classes at our training center. My work day consisted of arriving at 10 AM working in the office until 6PM when I then taught night classes until 10 PM five days a week.
There was an inside joke/debate I used to have with Comer (Qamaruddin's nickname) about being employee number one at CIT, and he always argued that he was the first employee which I never agreed with seeing as he was the owner and founder of CIT. CIT began to grow with sales people and additional instructors who taught other technologies like Oracle. I was teaching Microsoft certified training courses at the time. I was also learning Cisco and the Certified Webmaster certifications too.
The school began to grow and was doing well until the dot.com bust hit in October of 2000 hit. Much to my surprise I learned that Comer had invested much of his money in stock futures. When Comer informed me of this, he also requested that my salary be cut in half. Unfortunately, I could not abide by his request as I would not be able to pay my bills, including my house mortgage based on the figures he was quoting me. Sadly, I had to resign a moved on to teaching for other schools who were teaching certification training like U.C.R. extension and Future Net.
About this same time, a colleague of mine whom I worked with at New Horizon Computer Learning Center had moved on to being hired to teach in the Computer Information Systems department at Mt. San Jacinto College (MSJC). He told me that they had an opening for a Cisco instructor on a part-time interim basis. I applied for the position and was hired in January of 2001. That temporary assignment turned into a full-time tenure track offering which eventually turned into a full-time career for me that has lasted over 20 years.