Monday, August 31, 2009

Department Faculty Retreat and Academic Day

Last week's preparations for class went well.

On Thursday, our faculty met for a daylong meeting off campus. We reviewed assessment data from all of our classes from last year and made some revisions to the curriculum. In particular, we changed the learning objectives to CSC 110, CSC 211, and CSC 220. In addition, we initiated review of CSC 371 Database Management Systems and CSC 350 Computer Graphics. Our big curricular goal for this semester is to propose a Computer Engineering degree. I'll keep you posted.

While we were retreating, the freshmen were moving in. In addition to lots of facebook posts about bingo, on Friday, they participated in an Academic Day conference. I gave two talks on Google in Academia that were well-attended and I was happy that students asked questions and talked about other talks they thought were interesting.

Now, on to classes!

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Folding@Home Update

This summer, the macs, the PCs in room 162, one play station and a couple of individual machines continued to participate in Folding @ Home. At this point, we are 172nd out of 158008 teams and we continue to make progress. We're hoping to move up even faster once we get the machines in 164 going (had to turn them off when the air conditioning was turned down for the summer). The goal: to beat NC State (where I got my PhD) so that I can gloat!!! They are currently 92nd. We can do it! If you want to join us, you can find instructions for how to set your machine up at http://clipper.ship.edu/folding/ Let us know when you join!

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Preparing for Fall

Our new freshman class is due to arrive in less than two weeks. With that in mind, we're busy preparing. We are creating new email accounts, setting up accounts on clipper, creating course websites and finishing up some other details. We're on schedule and we'll be ready to go as they arrive.

Returning students will notices some significant improvements in the setup of our labs and servers. We've created a google site for information about a variety of technologies we've deployed. You can find it by logging into you cs.ship.edu email account, clicking "sites" and clicking "Browse . ." We've even made it so everyone can edit those pages - add your wisdom and we'll all be better informed.

This year, the schedule for academic day has been changed and there are some interesting seminars throughout the morning. I'll be running a couple on "Google for Academia" and one on advising. Check out the schedule by logging on to info.ship.edu.

One goal for this year: one blog entry every week. Nag me if I miss!!!!!!