The purpose of Orchard Avenue Technologies (OAT) is to employ and train philosophy graduate students to work in the tech industry. Graduate students in philosophy have strong logical and problem solving skills, and computer programming, which is applied logic, offers an avenue for philosophy students towards gainful employment. By serving as the source of training, OAT provides employment opportunities to philosophy students, along with guaranteeing the quality of the skillset of the employees to customers who work with the employees directly.
There are two types of contracts with customers that OAT pursues: contracts which sell a service to be completed by OAT, and contracts which provide a trained contractor to companies to work under the management of that company. In the former case a customer requests a product to be built or a service to be provided, then OAT employees are trained as needed to complete the contract, and in tandem with the more experienced employees the contract is fulfilled. In the latter case, the customer provides a job description and list of the technologies required to complete the job, then an OAT employee is trained to meet the requirements of the role, and the OAT employee then works in that role for the duration of the contract.
The primary pool of employees OAT is drawing from are the students in the MA program in philosophy at Franciscan University of Steubenville. There is no official involvement of the university at this time with OAT, but both co-owners of the company have a relationship to the MA program, and the company was formed for the purpose of giving students within that program the means to either fund their studies apart from loans, or to provide employment opportunities outside of academia for graduates of the program.
