Ed Lance

Ed has more than 10 years of industry experience as a developer, project lead, technical trainer and manager. A constant student himself, Ed is a Sun Certified Java Programmer, has Bachelor's of Science in Management and Communications and is working on a Masters in Computer Information Technology.

In addition to occasional consulting work, Ed keeps his coding skills sharp writing courseware and hands-on labs His passion is learning, discussing and teaching Java, Eclipse, Object Oriented Principles and Practices, and related topics.

Ed also has a wide variety of business experience including 15 years in the restaurant industry, owning and operating a couple of small businesses, managing a medical practice and helping to start a pharmaceutical research company.

Derek Parsons

Derek has, over the last 20 years, worked for some of the largest companies in the UK and USA. Apart form his considerable technical prowess; he brings real world experience to the class room as a developer, project manager and architect. Despite graduating for the University of London and obtaining a doctorate at the University of Hull, Derek has been the perpetual student, obtaining numerous technical certifications in java and project management and is a current PMP.

Since becoming a full time trainer, Derek has pushed himself to adopt some of the newer technical frameworks, to ensure that he remains up to date with industry trends. He brings his distinct "British" sense of humor to the classroom to support the communication of key aspects, giving the students a unique experience.

Jay Rostosky

Jay entered the software industry in 1990, and has been involved in software development, pre- and post-sales technical support, consulting, courseware and curriculum development, and classroom training. In all of these areas, he has been able to quickly learn the applicable technologies and then help others "bridge the gap" so that they too can be more effective in their jobs. He has been working with Java since 1996. He brings outstanding written and verbal communication skills to the nTier team and has authored several complete courses, both for previous employers as well as nTier and its training partners. He also worked as a public school teacher, which helped to bolster his classroom management and organization skills.

His product and technology knowledge is extensive, including ORACLE and other relational databases (he worked at Oracle from 1990-5); several application servers, most notably IBM WebSphere and JBoss AS; frameworks such as EJB 2 and 3, Hibernate, and Struts. He is Java certified (SCJP) and JBoss certified, and has completed IBM WebSphere Administration training and taught the course several times.

Susan DeGennaro

Susan is a senior level IT professional with ten years of experience working with a variety of languages and platforms. During the past eight years, her primary focus has been with Object-Oriented languages. Susan has experience in a wide variety of technologies, including Java, C++, WebSphere Studio Application Developer, Rational Application Developer, OO Analysis and Design, UDB DB2, MQSeries, and various mainframe languages and tools.

The majority of Susan's time has been spent leading classroom instruction, utilizing her Masters in Education. Susan also consults with varying clients on an as needed basis. When not in the classroom, Susan spends her time as a team lead in custom courseware development or in developing extensive example applications for students to practice. Susan's clients include Fortune 500 pharmaceutical and manufacturing companies, banking and other financial institutions, insurance companies, information technology companies, airlines, mail-order catalog companies, and the federal government.

Jim Harmon

Jim is a lead instructor based Chicago. He is an experienced developer and has spent a majority of his career building large-scale online applications at Accenture and at several Web-centric consulting firms. He now specializes in training Java developers to be more productive by using the latest technologies and frameworks. Jim has provided training for Fortune 500 companies and large private and governmental organizations including Knight Ridder Newspapers and the State of Wisconsin. He lectures extensively throughout the United States and Canada.

Ken Kousen

Dr. Kousen is an instructor, consultant, and developer specializing in all areas of Java, XML, and, more recently, Groovy and Grails. Over the past decade, he has taught courses and made presentations on topics ranging from Spring to Hibernate to Ajax to web services . His credentials include many industry certifications as well as several academic degrees, including two bachelor's, two master's, and a Ph.D. He is currently working on an O'Reilly book about Java and Groovy integration entitled "Making Java Groovy", which will appear in 2009.

Tom Fulton

Tom is an experienced developer and trainer with a diverse and extensive background in software development. His first development experience was with Coleco Industries, in which he acted as Project Leader and Game Designer for 13 arcade games. As Director of Software Development at Corliss Data Systems he directed the design and development of credit collection software, and later became Director of Computer Services for Corliss Credit Services, using the same software he was responsible for developing.

As an Account Manager at Command Systems, Tom worked on a variety of software systems in C and Pascal involving the utility industry and early multimedia projects for the insurance industry. For the last 16 years Tom has devoted his time to course development and training, while continuing to work in the software industry as a consultant.

Tad Buhman

Tad has been in the software industry for over 20 years. He was CEO of a software consulting and contracting company from 1990-2000.

Tad has also worked in corporate America in finance, capital markets and banking. He has a background in developing specific curriculum for corporate clients that has helped him focus training to optimize usable knowledge gained and retained by clients.

Tory Zundel

Tory has more than 15 years of industry experience as a developer, architect, technical lead, technical trainer and manager. Tory has been interested in programming computers since the early 80's, and started this path on the Apple //+ computer. Tory received a BS in Computer Science Maga Cum Laude from CWU.

Tory is still interested in most aspects of programming computers, with a particular interest in using modern tools (such as Hibernate, AJAX) and techniques (such as effective use of design patterns, and project methodologies such as Scrum) to increase the success of software development