One former Missouri Southern student compares his job to a Terminator movie.

Tom Campbell, associate consultant for Gestalt, LLC, writes software for the government developing command and control services for the U.S. defense department.

“If you’ve seen the Terminator movies, we’re designing SkyNet,” Campbell said.

He is a December 2004 graduate in CIS and computational math.

“What we do is help our troops in battle,” he said. “We analyze the battlefield. Instead of doing the conventional type of maneuver-based warfare where we go in and say we’ll send in the first wave, then we back off and see how things went, we found it’s better if we continuously pound the enemy non-stop, but in order to do that we have to constantly evaluate the effects of our attack, what the enemies weaknesses are, and what resources we have available. So in order to do that in real time, we’re developing software to support that.”

Bill Loftus, CEO of Gestalt, said Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) has created a “tremendous” environment for a defense like the focused technology company Gestalt.

“It’s great to be surrounded by like-minded organizations and be supported by strong resources and civic leaders,” Loftus said. “We look forward to continued growth in the defense sector and being a part of the Joplin business community for a long time to come.”

Campbell has worked at Gestalt since June.

“A year and a half ago I took a job with Conversant,” he said. “One of my former co-workers from there, Philip Anderson, went to work here we kept in close contact and he said this is a good job, good company. I started looking into it a little more and investigating and here I am.”

“The classes that prepared me the most were the information system classes taught by Schiavo,” he said. “A lot of the CIS core classes, too.”

Campbell has some advice for students wanting to get a start in his field.

“I would advise current students to get involved on campus,” he said. “I think Southern offers a lot of programs.”

Campbell said involvement in organizations is important.

“For one, when an employer looks at your résumé they see your grade point average, but they also look at other things,” he said. “An employer wants someone who does something, who is going to work for them. GPA is an indication of your performance, but if you are involved, then you are really doing something.”

He said interacting with people is also important.

“You are going to be thrown into different classes and have different teachers with different personalities,” he said. “Can you adapt and work with them? Because when you go out into the workplace environment there’s different personalities you have to work with.”

Gestalt’s new office will soon be located in the Joseph Newman Business and Technology Innovation Center off South McClelland Blvd.