The IT Infrastructure program is supported and directed by talented, engaged professionals at every level. Their experience and knowledge will help you navigate an educational and career path that works for you.
The Student-Advisor Relationship
We encourage you to cultivate a relationship with your academic advisor. Meet with them to discuss your career goals and more. Your academic advisor can:
- Discuss and support personal and career goals, but also challenge students to make the best choices in line with aspirations and academic performance.
- Provide accurate information about degree program requirements.
- Assist with understanding of academic policies and procedures.
- Offer referrals to campus resources and relevant opportunities.
In addition to talking with your advisor, we want you to:
- Cultivate relationships with faculty and staff.
- Read your U of M email. It is the University's official form of correspondence and contains need-to-know information.
- Understand important policies and specific degree requirements and become familiar with University tools for degree planning and charting progress.
- Use the One Stop website to find information about courses, registration and tuition.
- Bookmark the University calendar for important deadlines.
Advisors

Ashley Cruz
Academic Advisor
Ashley Cruz has been working with CCAPS students since 2018. She currently advises students in the Information Technology Infrastructure bachelor's and the Long Term Care Management minor. She holds a BA in International Studies and an MS in Administrative Leadership.

Liz Hruska
Career Counselor
Liz Hruska has been providing career counseling and coaching services for degree-seeking students since she joined the team of Career and Internship Services in 2008. She is a 2013 recipient of the John Tate Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising, which recognizes high-quality advising at the University of Minnesota.
Liz helps students with tactical pieces of the job search, including resume help, interview coaching, and internship search support. She also coaches students around larger self-exploration issues, including clarifying values and strengths and finding a work culture that fits. She has a special interest in providing support for student veterans, students from diverse backgrounds, and those with disabilities.
If you are an admitted degree-seeking student and would like to make an appointment with Liz, please visit: lizhruska.appointments.umn.edu (you will need to log in).
- HSM 3051 − Career and Internship Skills in Health Services Management
Faculty Co-Directors

Carl Follstad
BS, computer science, Mankato State University
Carl Follstad began his IT career writing device drivers for VMS systems, moving to large systems management. In 2001, as senior systems engineer for EMC Corporation, he focused on the storage industry, advising on strategy in enterprise business continuity, data protection, classification of data, and resilient storage subsystem design. Beginning in 2004, he managed the University of Minnesota Data Management Services group, which is responsible for architecture of the centralized system backup and SAN storage. In 2007, he returned to EMC as a pre-sales technical consultant. He now works for Dell Technologies, post EMC acquisition, as an advisory storage architect.
- INET 4001 – Foundations of Operating Systems
- INET 4032 – Systems I: Storage

Mark Langanki
BS, computer science, University of Minnesota
Mark Langanki has been working in the IT industry since 1989. His work centers on computing as it relates to telephony, networked applications, and distributed systems. Mark is the CTO of ConvergeOne and is leading innovation around the next model of IT and cloud services. He teaches at the University of Minnesota about operating systems, network programming, languages, and IT operations, and believes that learning doesn’t stop once a student graduates. Mark is dedicated to ensuring that students learn topics that will be applicable in the tech industry.
- INET 3101 C Programming: Language and Applications
- INET 4001 Introduction to Operating Systems
- INET 4021 Dev Ops I: Network Programming
Faculty

Joseph Axberg
MS, software engineering, University of St. Thomas; BS, electronics engineering, University of Nebraska
Mr. Axberg has worked in many roles in telecommunications and information technology, from architecture to system administration. He has experience with virtualization and cloud services including VMware, Amazon Web Services, and Azure. He is a cloud architect at Optum Technology, leading a team of developers transitioning virtual desktop services to a hybrid cloud solution. Prior to that, he worked at CenturyLink in telecommunications engineering and operations deploying voice and data services, where he managed the transition of a national 8XX call routing platform from Sybase to MySQL. Mr. Axberg is currently pursuing a BA in English at St. Catherine University.
- INet 4031 – Introduction to Systems
- INet 4041 - Networking II: Emerging Technologies

Ben Ayvaz
MBA with emphasis in technology delivery and marketing, Arizona State University W. P. Carey School of Business; BS, management information systems, University of Wisconsin
Ben is a management consultant with extensive experience in project management in the construction, technology, government, and health care industries. Ben's goal in teaching is to give back to a profession he loves by sharing his experience and helping to develop our next generation of leaders.
- INET 3102 – Web Infrastructure
- INET 4082W − IT Infrastructure Projects and Processes
- INET 4083W – Systems II: Analysis and Design

Tyler Deutsch
MS, Data Science, Northwestern University; BS, Operations Management, University of Dayton
Tyler Deutsch is a data science leader at Procter & Gamble (P&G) where he leads teams of data scientists building marketing and retail models focused on the consumer. He has experience deploying machine learning and optimization models into highly scalable production cloud and big data architectures. His specialties include regression, classification, NLP, time series models, computer vision, optimization, and deep learning frameworks, leveraging the latest techniques in Python and R. Tyler is pleased to share with students his passion for consumer insights and enterprise scale algorithms.
INET 4061 – Data Science I: Fundamentals

Richard Howey
DBA, business administration, Metropolitan State University; MS, management of technology, University of Minnesota; BS, mathematics/computer science, Lawrence Technological University, Southfield, MI
Dr. Howey has worked in information technology and data management since 1975. At Univac Defense Systems (now Unisys), he developed software for real-time air traffic control and military command and control systems. Later, he was a data warehouse/business intelligence consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers and IBM, among others. Most recently, he worked in enterprise architecture, information architecture, data warehousing/business intelligence, and data governance at Target and UnitedHealth Group. He has taught courses at Augsburg University and the Carlson School of Management. He is a Certified Data Management Professional (CDMP), a Certified Business Intelligence Professional (CBIP) and a Certified TOGAF 9 Enterprise Architect.
INet 4707 – Introduction to Databases

Scott Lee-Eichenwald
MS, software design and development (MSDD), University of Saint Thomas; BA, psychology, College of Saint Scholastica
Scott Lee-Eichenwald has diverse professional experience in social sciences and medical technology, with over 20+ years with medical devices companies including Guidant, Boston Scientific, Medtronic, and Smiths Medical. He also has experience providing enterprise interoperability software solutions for Infor's health care division. He has managed research and development and many global technology implementation projects. In addition, he has been teaching online for 15+ years. He is published in Healthcare Information Technology and received his Six Sigma Green Belt certification from the University of Saint Thomas in 2012. Scott holds an Information Systems Security Certificate from Colorado Technical University.
- HSM 4043 – Project and Program Management in Health Services Management
- HSM 4065 – Information Privacy and Security in Health Services Management
- INET 1001 – Survey of Information Technology
- INET 3011W – Social Impact of Information Technology
- INET 4051 – IT Infrastructure Operations

Norman Owens
MBA, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota; MA, information assurance and security, Capella University; BA, philosophy/logics, Brown University
As an enterprise architect leading architecture teams, Norman Owens has built cloud and security service solutions totaling over $648M since 2013 for the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Kansas, and Georgia and at the California State University system. Norman is currently a senior solution architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS). He is passionate about enabling the new leaders of IT transformation to become tomorrow’s business disrupters. He challenges students to be the best predictors of the future by getting ready to make it and backs up this challenge with AWS-based hands-on labs in his classes.
- INET 4007 – Security II: Cyber Security
- INET 4709 – Data Management I: Fundamentals
- INET 4711 – Data Management II: Distributed Systems

John Raabe
BS, business administration, University of Wisconsin-River Falls
John Raabe currently leads the internal IT audit function at a major health care provider. Previously, he led IT systems administration staff, and he has designed and supported enterprise-class networks and systems. As a certified information systems auditor (CISA), he is particularly interested in IT controls, risk management, compliance, and network design and enterprise IT management issues. He also consults privately on system administration and network management.
- INET 4002 Foundations of Networking
- INET 4153 Introduction to Security: Policy and Regulation

Jonathan Silverman
MS, computer science, Union College; B., computer science, Union College
Jon Silverman’s main areas of interest are software engineering, scalable distributed systems, and analytics. After leaving college, he moved from Springfield, MA, to Minneapolis to join Honeywell’s Research Center. In 1989 he left Honeywell to join a venture capital-funded startup in the area of metropolitan area networks. Since then he has been working on communications systems for contact centers and massively scaled unified communications. Jon is currently Senior Director of Engineering at Avaya.
- INET 4121 – DevOps II: Development Strategies

Kyle Stahl
MS, business analytics and BISyE, industrial and systems engineering, University of Minnesota
Kyle Stahl is a senior data science supervisor at Cargill Inc, where he leads a team of data science specialists in solving complex machine learning and optimization problems across the agriculture industry. He has applied advanced analytics techniques to various industry groups within Cargill, including global supply chain, animal growth modeling, biochemistry, sales, agronomy, and production scheduling. Kyle works across the entire machine learning process, from defining the problem and collecting data to integrating mathematical models into software and helping people adapt their business processes to new technology.
- INET 4062 – Data Science II: Advanced

Nathan Tymeson
MBA, Carlson School of Management; BS, business administration and computer information systems, Missouri State University
Nathan Tymeson has over 10 years experience in designing and building secure enterprise networks in corporate, Internet-facing, mobile, and extranet environments. He’s held roles ranging from tech support to network architecture, from network security to network manager--all within a variety of industries. A significant accomplishment of Nathan’s includes the design of complex wide area interconnect strategies for multinational corporations. He also has experience creating network and security strategies for manufacturing environments, network quality of service implementations, and mobile network design. He holds industry-recognized certifications from Microsoft, Cisco, and other vendor-neutral organizations.
- INET 4011 - Networking I: Networking Administration
- INET 4165 - Security I: Principles