Spotlight on MITB (Financial Services) Faculty: Alan Megargel
MITB Senior Lecturer Alan Megargel's life is all about change. Through his career life, he went from being a promising musician to a practicing engineer, later to senior IT positions in banking and finally as a full time university lecturer. Despite the many changes and the steep learning curves that come with them, the former Vice President of Information Technology in OCBC Bank believes that everything in life is linked and that it's important to enter into a new change with a sense of purpose.
'GO INTO EVERY NEW JOB WITH PURPOSE'
This 'gung-ho' attitude towards his work is also reflected in his love and passion for his job as a senior lecturer in SMU School of Computing and Information Systems (SCIS). He explains that it was at a right time that he made the switch to teach; everything that he had gone through was beneficial to what he teaches his students right now as it gives him the credibility and the business context when explaining concepts in his classes such as the class on Corporate & Institutional Banking in the MITB Financial Services programme. For example, his experience in leading an initiative to implement service orientated architecture in a bank within a 2 year period helped him to illustrate the type of organizational and technical challenges that the students themselves might face in designing and implementing solutions for a financial service institution.
Besides teaching undergraduate and graduate courses on IT and banking technology & operations, Mr. Megargel is also currently busy with the SMU Teaching Bank. The Teaching Bank has been under construction since a year ago, and with the help of approximately 30 students, it is now beginning to work like an actual bank except for its use of virtual money. Currently, it is being used to teach students how to architect and build a bank and the operational processes within it. However, work on the bank has not ended and Professor Alan expects help from another 4 sponsored final year project teams in the next semester to build additional components of the bank.
'WHAT THE MITB PROGRAM TEACHES IS VERY RELEVANT TO IT AND BUSINESS; IT EQUIPS STUDENTS WITH ALL THE SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE TO CONTRIBUTE FROM DAY 1'
When asked about what he thinks of the MITB program, the senior lecturer emphasizes that the MITB is a very niche study. However, he believes that it's in the right place as Singapore is one of the top 5 financial centers in the world. It's also not too farfetched to believe so considering the number of MITB students who have jobs lined up for them even before graduation. He further explains that the rigorous program requires students to put in many hours of work and to engage hands-on which in turn makes them an attractive hire as they are able to begin contributing to the company even on Day 1.
