Shippensburg Computer Science News

Humans vs. Aliens in Design Patterns

2011-12-09T07:35:00.001-08:00

This semester, the sophomores in our Design Patterns class created a game where humans battle it out with aliens.You can watch it on our YouTube channel.

Here is a legend to explain the graphics (clearly, this course was NOT focused on game graphics!):
Green Triangles = Alien
Purple Circle = Human
Black Square = Pistol
Orange Square = Pulse Rifle
Blue Square = Plasma Cannon
Red Square = Chain Gun
Bar along one side = remaining health points

The health bar represents the back of the Human or Alien and helps determine what direction the Human or Alien is facing. Each life form (e.g. Human or Alien) is using a state pattern to determine it's actions (Finding a weapon, Finding a target, Attacking a target, or Reloading). Lifeforms that die are replaced with it's corresponding type (e.g. Human for a Human). Each Alien is given a Linear Recovery Rate that recovers a random amount of health points at a random time rate. For example 5 health points every 4 time ticks. Each Human is given a random amount of armor. The Alien's state pattern has a special case that if the Alien gets hurt enough it will "run" away until enough health is recovered. The Human's state pattern has a special case that if the Human comes across a better weapon (it does more damage) it will swap weapons. The other patterns used in the program: Strategy for the Alien's recovery system, Observer for the time system, and Decorator for the weapon system.

WiCS Shopping Trip

2011-11-16T07:32:00.001-08:00

Last weekend, our Women in Computer Science took a trip to the Hagerstown Outlets with the goal of preparing for interviewing. Everyone got their makeup done so they could see what professional makeup looks like. A couple of seniors purchased suits and everyone else had fun shopping. In their words, "Now they just need the interviews at which to use the suits!"

IEEE Extreme Competition

2011-11-10T14:09:00.001-08:00

In October, the programming team competed in the IEEE Extreme Programming Competition - a 24-hour, worldwide, internet competition. And we were stellar!!! Four teams in the quarter of all teams competing! Two teams in the top 20% and one team in the top 10%.

Derezzed: 147th Overall (9.70%)
Harmony: 229th Overall (15.11%)
Hexadecimators: 291st Overall (19.20%)
HoneyBadgers: 342nd Overall (22.56%)

out of 1516 total teams.

Derezzed: 2nd (Region)

Harmony: 5th (Region)
Hexadecimators: 7th (Region)
HoneyBadgers: 8th (Region)

out of 21 teams in the region.

Team Members:

Derezzed

Jessica Burns
Steve Bussey
Danielle Johnston

Harmony

Jen Funck
Nick Hydock
Matt Hydock

Hexadecimators

Emily Bruckart
Kevin Dederer
Corbyn Johnson

HoneyBadgers

Greg Battaglia
Zack Lessie
Andrew Perterson

Yes, we are cool!

11/11/11 Party This Friday!

2011-11-09T10:26:00.000-08:00

When I was eight (40 years ago!), I discovered that there was only one day in each century when all of the digits of the date as we write it are the same: 11/11/11. I vowed then to have a huge party when that date came around! Well, this Friday is the day!!!

We will be doing all sorts of fun things: watching movies (The Matrix, because Neo is The One and Ocean's 11, of course!), playing video games, playing board/card games (Uno! and others). There will be lots of good food and fun to be had and everyone is welcome! Please come!!!!!

The next date of this kind of party will be 01/23/45, but I doubt I will still be here . . .

Accreditation Visit

2011-11-09T04:36:00.000-08:00

I have already missed one of these daily blogs, so I will do two today. This one is my excuse!

We had our onsite visit from our accreditors from Sunday through yesterday. They certainly looked at everything VERY carefully. They had meetings with all of our faculty, a set of students, support places like the library and the sciences, and a wide variety of administrators. We have a couple of things to fix up, but they said wonderful things about our students, our faculty, and the support we get from our administration. While I was exhausted at the end of the day yesterday, I always like bragging about what we do!

ACM Regional Competition

2011-11-07T14:25:00.000-08:00

Saturday we were a site as part of the ACM Regional Competition. We hosted 22 teams from 8 schools. Out of about 170 teams, this is how we placed:

Derezzed 29th place
Jessica Burns
Steve Bussey
Danielle Leonard

Something down 92nd place
Garin Dangler
Greg Battaglia
Corbyn Johnson

Hexadecimators 101st place
Emily Bruckart
Kevin Dederer
Zack Lessie

I am proud of this response for two reasons:

1) I watched Emily coach her teammates (who are relatively new to this), instead of taking the keyboard and writing code that would have been easy for her. The longterm benefit of that for the team is much higher than if she (a senior) had just coded the solutions.

2) Our teams showed excellent grace and sportsmanship. There were some challenges in the judging (which sometimes happens) that put our teams (and all of the teams at our site) at a disadvantage. In previous years, that would have sent some of our more competitive teammates into a frenzy. This year, while we were disappointed, we handled the situation much better.

All in all, it has been an excellent Fall for the team (I will post our previous results on other days), and I am very proud of their performance.

Monthly Programming Team Winners

2011-11-04T09:17:00.001-07:00

The programming team has been running competitions in our practices and teams gain points throughout the month. The winners for October are freshmen Kevin Dederer and Tyler Dalius. Honor them with all the glory they deserve!

Blog a Day

2011-11-03T06:26:00.000-07:00

ok - So I have been too distracted to keep up with our news, but we have had a huge number of things happen this term. I keep hearing about things that happen during November like Novembeard (apparently, some of our students have vowed to not shave for the month of November). Last year, a podcast I listened to did a "podcast-a-day" for November. That gave me an idea: ONE BLOG A SCHOOL DAY through November.

Feel free to complain if I blow it (and, yes, I already missed yesterday - picky, picky, picky!)

Potato Gun. Really?!

2011-04-28T21:20:00.000-07:00

The programming took a break to shoot potatoes from a potato gun today. The videos made it look like great fun and, apparently, only one evil person hit the power lines!

From left to right: Chris Medykiewicz, David Kelly, Steve Bussey, Jessica Burns, Danielle Leonard, Emily Bruckart, Philip Diffenderfer, Jimmy Quinn, Chris Beggs.

The Waterfall Works

2011-04-20T11:18:00.000-07:00

Check it out!

PACISE Conference

2011-04-10T15:04:00.000-07:00

This weekend we hosted the annual PACISE Conference. PACISE is an organization of the computer science and information systems departments in the State System schools, but I was happy to see participation from other schools like Dickinson and American University, too. Turnout was very good (about 140 participants). Here we are at dinner.

The programming contest was very well attended: 26 teams!! Dickinson and Millersville took first and second. Our best placement was Jessica Burns, Danielle Leonard and Steve Bussey in sixth place. The problem set was pretty tough and the competition was very good.

The keynote speaker was Clif Kussmaul from Muhlenburg College and his talk was on Using Free and Open Source Software in the Classroom. It was relevant and insightful. I'm hoping to leverage some of it in my selected topics course this summer.

Computer Engineering is Approved!

2011-04-07T21:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Dr. Briggs and I had to get all dressed up to present our department's proposal for a B.S. in Computer Engineering. Much to my surprise, my students didn't make fun of it at all (they didn't even seem to notice!). The presentation went well even though there were so many suits in the room that I got nervous. Here we are in our fancy clothes:

Today, the Board of Governor's gave the final vote of approval required for the creation of our new B.S. in Computer Engineering. We couldn't be more excited and we owe thanks to the Dean (Dr. Mike), the Associate Provost (Dr. Schoolcraft), the Provost (Dr. Lyman), and the President (Dr. Ruud).

Check out the official announcement!

Possibilities

2011-03-31T11:44:00.000-07:00

Incoming students often ask me how the job market is. For Computer Science students, it is surprisingly strong as evidenced by this recent story on NPR. I have to admit that I haven't heard tales of shrimp cocktail, but I believe all of last year's graduates have software development jobs that are productive and interesting. They have been hired by places locally, in Pittsburgh, and outside Washington and many had multiple opportunities. It's a good time to be a geek!

Council of Trustees Approves Computer Engineering

2011-03-25T17:54:00.000-07:00

Our Computer Engineering proposal passed one more milestone today: the Council of Trustees approved it. Check out the University's news release. This means we have one more hurdle to pass: the Board of Governors. Dr. Briggs and I will be presenting it at their next meeting on April 6th or 7th. We are hopeful and I will keep you posted on our progress!

CS Games Results

2011-03-18T08:48:00.000-07:00

The Programming Team/WiCS have returned from their great adventures north of the border. You can find results at Ship's news and The Programming Team's website and the CS Games website.

It was a great experience and I'm proud of how well they adapted to a completely different kind of contest than we are used to. Thank you to everyone who bought a shirt and to the alumni who supported this trip. The students learned a lot!

Changes to CSC110 Computer Science I

2011-02-28T09:00:00.000-08:00

We have made a significant change to our Computer Science I course that we are very excited about. It is currently a four-credit four hour class and our classes run almost full to 32 students per class. We were concerned because 32 students makes it difficult to get to everyone when we are doing hands on activities, so we have decided to split the course into separate lab and lecture sections in much the same way other science classes are run. The lecture section will be a normal three-credit three hour class and the lab will be a smaller section (limited to 22 students) containing the hands on work.

In addition, we are creating two versions of the lab: a three hour lab for majors and a two hour lab for non-majors. We hope this will improve things for both student populations. For non-majors, this will let us focus on the challenges the material provides to students whose skills and focus may not be in this area. For majors, we are going to use the extra hour to provide a freshman seminar experience including material about potential careers, study skills, college life skills, team building, etc.

This is a big change that was initiated as the result of our assessing the retention and failure rates in CS1 and we are hopeful that we will see significant improvement in both of those measures as a result.

Update on Shirts and Travel

2011-02-17T13:12:00.000-08:00

Today, the programming team is creating their "flash" video for the CS Games. Here they are in their team shirts:

David Abrams, Danielle Leonard, Brian Ettinger, Emily Bruckart, Rob Koch, and David Kelly (not pictured: Jada Williams, Logan Kennedy, and Steve Bussey)

And their team name: Getting Our Codon!

(look up codon if you don't know what it is . . .)

The department shirts will look like theirs without the special team name on the back. They are still available if you want one . . .

Programming Team Travel and Department T-Shirts

2011-02-15T12:53:00.000-08:00

The Programming Team is traveling a bit further than usual this spring. They will be going to The CS Games at Concordia University in Montreal. This event lasts three days and includes a wide variety of competitions. Nine of our students will be competing as a team led by Dr. Armstrong. It will be an adventure and I will let you know how it goes.

While we are supporting this trip with moneys from our alumni and the Dean has offered his support as well, not all of the expenses are covered. The team has designed department T-shirts to raise some money. Check out the cool designs! The QR codes take you to are department's web site. White shirts are $10 and red ones are $15. If you are interested, let me know what to order!

On a side note, Steve Bussey (pictured with the white shirt above), is the member of a jazz band: Jive Turkeys on the Loose. They will be performing at McFeely's lounge in the lower level CUB, this Saturday from 9pm to 11pm. The band will be performing some jazz standards for the first 50 minute set and doing a more impromptu "jam" style performance for the second 50 minute set. The music will be a mix of blues, bebop, funk, and ambient styles.

Tech Support!

2011-01-28T18:20:00.000-08:00

Recognizing that our technical support needs are different from the rest of the campus, the university has funded a full-time tech support person for our department's equipment. In December, we hired Tim Boyum and he is doing an excellent job! Our server/lab configuration is a complex combination Mac and Linux workstations, three physical servers and 15 virtual machines; all of which share a file space and single log-on capabilities. Tim has shown an incredible understanding of Kerberos, LDAP, and a bunch of other technologies that I don't begin to understand.

In addition to his technical skills, Tim's demeanor serves him well. He wants the machines to work well, reacts quickly when something is not working, is very open to suggestions, and has patience in helping all of our students and our faculty. He is developing a working relationship with campus technical support that will be critical to his success.

Tim's arrival has allowed Dr. Briggs to return to teaching full time and he has the real-time/embedded students engaged in programming the FPGAs. We are happy to have his focus returned to our students! Over the last week, his office has once again been taken over by long conversations with students about research projects and current technology news.

For now, this new position is funded only through the summer, but we are actively working with administration to find ways to convert it to a permanent position.

Google's AI Challenge

2010-12-07T18:12:00.000-08:00

Google sponsored an AI challenge this fall. The goal was to build a player for a game that would beat all other players. The game was called Planet Wars and ran in a 2-dimensional universe with a random set of planets. Each player gets 100 member army and the goal is to capture and hold as many planets as possible. You can see the rules and a demo of the game here.

Over 4600 people from all over the world competed including three of our students: David Kelly led coming in 1328th. Emily Bruckart was 1790th and Rob Koch was 1544th.

This is a great example of our students pursuing interesting things on their own. I had no idea this was going on until David posted his result on FaceBook. I'm really proud that our students are this engaged. However, I wish I had been able to compete, too!

Updates . . .

2010-11-26T22:25:00.000-08:00

I have been (rightfully) nagged that our news needs updating, so here goes.

As usual, there is (almost) always programming team news. They have competed in two more competitions recently: the ACM regionals which are like the rest of our competitions and the IEEE Xtreme competition that lasted 24 hours. We had two teams compete: Jessica Burns, Danielle Leonard, and Steve Bussey finished 179 out of 971 teams by finishing 9 of 17 problems. Emily Bruckart, David Kelly, and Logan Kennedy finished 6 problems and cam in 272. Having competed this year, we'll be more prepared for next year! And our thanks to Dr. Armstrong for being willing to stay for the entire 24 hours!

We had three teams that competed in the ACM regionals. Three teams with all of them solving a problem shows great depth in our team; the problems were very hard this year! Here they are showing off the balloons they earned:

Emily Bruckart, Phil Diffienderfer, and David Kelly

Jessica Burns, Danielle Leonard, and Steve Bussey

Andrew Bodulow, Garin Dangler, and Greg Battaglia

We have a couple of other projects that are nearing completion:

Our Women in Computer Science team is almost finished with their computer controlled waterfall. We've been madly plumbing and Dr. Briggs helped us by designing a circuit to connect the processor to the valves. We may have a dry run (pun intended!) before Christmas break.

We are also developing a video for prospective students. We're hoping to have it by January. We'll post it on the website and we're going to burn some to hand out at open houses. Here's hoping it's as cool as I imagine it can be!

Next time I'm late with a post, feel free to nag. There is ALWAYS something going on!

More Programming Team Success!

2010-10-26T17:37:00.000-07:00

This week our programming team competed in two more programming competitions:

Last Thursday was the UD Unnamed Internet Contest 2010 in which we had three teams competing. The Fairy Queen Princesses (Emily Bruckart, Philip Diffenderfer, and David Kelly) came in second solving six problems and Something Down (Rob Koch) came in third solving five problems. The Hexadecimators (Jimmy Quinn and Stephen Bussey) came in sixth solving four problems which is very impressive since they both are freshmen! Rumor has it that the winning team (Charlie the Dinosaur from Dickinson) honed their skills by attending a programming team camp last summer. We will have to work to beat them at regionals!

Friday we competed in a new type of competition: the IEEE Xtreme programming competition that lasted 24 hours (8 pm Friday to 8 pm Saturday). Competing against 971 teams from around the world, Jessica Burns, Stephen Bussey, and Danielle Leonard solved nine problems coming in 179th and Emily Bruckart, David Kelly, and Logan Kennedy solved six problems coming in 272nd. Special thanks go to Dr. Armstrong who supervised for the whole 24 hours!

All of this is great practice for the ACM Regional competition coming up on November 6th. I'll let you know how well we do!

Fourth is a good start to the season!

2010-10-17T17:53:00.000-07:00

This weekend Emily Bruckhart, Philip Diffenderfer, and David Kelly competed in a programming competition at the Consortium for Computing Science in Colleges East conference. While they got off to a quick start by solving two problems before anyone else did, they ended the competition in fourth place. They were close to solutions to two other problems and had strategies started for two more. I think they learned some important strategy tips and will do even better at the Delaware Internet competition this Thursday. This team will be together for that competition and the Mid-Atlantic regionals, so their experience with each other will certainly improve.

Emily, Philip, and David

Upcoming Events

2010-10-11T12:49:00.000-07:00

The next few weeks will be VERY busy for us.

Next weekend (the 15th to the 16th), three faculty and three students are going to Conference of Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges - East. The students will be participating in a programming competition and faculty will be attending sessions focused on issues in teaching computer science. It's a great place to get ideas from places that are similar to Ship.

The following weekend is Homecoming! We will have our semi-annual meeting with our Industrial Advisory Council. They come visit us twice a year to give us feedback on what we are doing and where we are heading. In addition, six students will be participating in the IEEExtreme competition: a 24-hour programming competition. Thanks to our alumni because your donations are funding this event in its entirety!

October 27th to October 30th, Dr. Armstrong and I will be attending Frontiers in Education 2010. This is the premier national engineering education conference and we will be presenting our results from a preliminary study in which we used videos to explore how students learn to program. We are hoping we will find a partner school or two so that we can generalize our findings.

Finally, November 7th will be the annual Mid-Atlantic Regional Competition of the International Collegiate Programming Competition. We are one of six sites and we will host about 20 teams. Judging is run in Virginia and this is one of the largest competitions in the nation.

Clearly, I'll have plenty to blog about for the next month! I'll keep you posted!

Google Docs Changes our Classes

2010-10-06T05:58:00.000-07:00

We have given all of our students Google Apps for Education Accounts. Not only does this give them email accounts, but it also gives them Google Sites, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and a bunch of other cool Google tools. My Traditional Life Cycle class is a good example of how our students are using these tools. They are working on a requirements document for a team project. Here is the team working away:

It might look like they are working individually, but, they are all editing the same document at the same time:

There is a constant hum as they debate the things I would expect them to be discussing, so they are clearly working as a team. Different subgroups are working on different parts of the document, but they don't have to worry about combining those changes later. They enjoy working this way and are building a good document. My only real concern is that they are listening to Dirty Dancing!

Open House

2010-09-28T11:35:00.000-07:00

A couple of Saturdays ago, I helped at our Open House for prospective students. I should do that very regularly! Bragging about our programs to them is a great way to remind me of all of the cool things we do. There are so many things, I thought I'd share the slides from the presentation so everyone can be awed by us! Let me know what I have missed so I can brag about more next time!

Tech Talks

2010-09-10T11:04:00.000-07:00

Every Friday, Dr. Briggs is running a series of talks (Tech Talks) about our machines, labs, servers, etc. Today he talked about accounts on our machines and how they can leverage AFS and our VPN to access/share files. We are working on posting a video of the talk and notes with the details onto our equipment support web site: https://sites.google.com/a/cs.ship.edu/equipment-support/

Let us know if there are topics that you are interested in so we can keep this series going strong!

Dr. Lee's Research With Her Students

2010-06-25T08:36:00.000-07:00

Dr. Lee has been actively working to involve both graduate and undergraduate students in her research projects. She has just returned from a trip to The 13th CUR National Conference was Undergraduate Research which was titled Transformative Practice: Developing Leaders and Solutions for a Better Society. The Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) National Conference 2010 was held at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, June 19 - 22, 2010.

Dr. Lee presented a poster titled "Accurate and Efficient Solvers for Analyzing DNA Microarray Gene Expression" and it detailed her work on recovering missing values for a given DNA microarray gene expression for complex diseases like Crohn's Disease and Type II diabetes. This is an ongoing project for Dr. Lee and she has successfully included Fen Qin, a graduate student, into the research. This summer, she has grants to fund not only Fen's activities, but to also include Matt Freed, an undergraduate student. Expect to see more as this project continues . . .

One of our Graduate Students Solved a Problem in SIAM

2010-06-22T18:39:00.000-07:00

SIAM (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics) poses problems to see if readers can solve them. Recently, they posed "A Liouville-Type Property for Differential Inequalities" and one of our graduate students was an author on one of the solutions they accepted. Check out Fen Qin's amazing mathematical skills.

Programming Team is victorious, again!

2010-03-28T08:45:00.000-07:00

Our programming team competed at a contest at Dickinson College this weekend. There were fifteen teams from about seven schools including Dickinson, Gettysburg, Messiah, and Lebanon Valley College. Phil Diffenderfer, Andrew Marx, and Keith Porter came in first place by solving all of the problems with an hour to spare. To challenge them, the head judge gave them an extra problem that was in previous competitions but never solved. They came close to getting that one, too! Dane Howard, Logan Kennedy, and Rob Koch solved five problems placing in third. Philip Hagar and David Kelly solved two problems as did Jessica Burns, Emily Bruckart, and Danielle Leonard. Four people earned jackets (Dane Howard, Andrew Marx (though both of them should have earned theirs previously), David Kelly, and Danielle Leonard!

We travel to West Chester to compete against the other State System teams on April 10th. I think we'll do well!

Weekly Programming Contest

2010-02-04T12:21:00.000-08:00

The Programming Team is running a weekly programming competition that all of our students are invited to join! You can find details at https://sites.google.com/a/cs.ship.edu/progteam/online-contest and it's an opportunity to make some money! The contest a cumulative through the semester and the department has pledged $100 for first place, $60 for second place, and $40 for third place. The first problem has been posted and is due by 2/6, so get started!

A new semester begins

2010-01-21T19:48:00.000-08:00

We are approaching the end of the first week of classes of spring 2010. Here are some things to watch for:

Our Testing & XP course will be building applications for a local business and a teacher in Chambersburg
Our programming team will compete in two competitions.
Our programming team is starting a weekly running competition with prizes at the end of the semester (check it out)
Our Game Development Club is going to start development with Flash Professional
The BROADSIDE Center will continue work with local industries
We are making proposals to update and improve some of our lab equipment
We have 26 seniors completing senior research projects covering a wide variety of topics

I'll try to keep you posted, but, if I get busy and forget to post news every week, NAG ME!!!

Conference Trip

2009-11-02T04:32:00.000-08:00

I just got back from a trip to Villanova University to the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges - East conference. It's a great place to see what people from campuses similar to ours are doing in their classrooms. There were faculty from other state system schools, liberal arts colleges, and the Penn State branch campuses. You can see what kinds of things we talked about at http://ccsce09.villanova.edu/index.shtml.

I was presenting the work we've done on using video phenomenography to study how student's problem solving strategies mature throughout their education. I was most pleased with two other sessions. One was by an alumnus of ours, Jeff Stone, who is teaching at Penn State Schuylkyl and is exploring what effects student's perceptions of computer science as a discipline and the other was by the Philadelphia Area Computer Science Teacher's Association and how they are working toward certification of high school computer science teachers. I agree!

I was very pleased to see that we continue to have more flexibility in our curriculum and our research as a result of the generosity of our alumni. I spoke with a colleague who was hampered in an interesting project for his CS1 students because his administration didn't have $100 for some equipment. I agree that times are tough, but our alumni continue to help us sustain a strong program that involves our students in lots of interesting project and I am grateful for that.

Our Programming Team Rocks!

2009-10-21T10:05:00.001-07:00

In preparation for the ACM regional competition, our programming team competed in an internet contest last night. Our first team (Philip Diffenderfer, Keith Porter, and Casey Boone) solved five problems in 227 minutes coming in first place! Our second team (Logan Kennedy, Robert Koch, and Emily Bruckart) also solved five problems but took a slightly longer 312 minutes coming in second place. Our third team had two members who were competing in their first competition ( Philip Hagar, Brendan Johnston, Steve Jurnach) but still solved two problems.

Our first two teams beat Dickinson, Millersville, University of Delaware, and Washington College. We'll see them all again on November 7th at the regional competition. Here's hoping we beat them there, too!

P =? NP in the NY Times!

2009-10-08T14:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, one of the classic computer science problems was discussed in the New York Times. They give a reasonable description of the P =? NP problem and why it is fundamental challenge in computer science. However, there are some errors that come from trying to explain the problem in general terms. Can you find them?

The source of this article is an article in the Communications of the ACM which gives a much more clear description of the problem. It's an article every computer science student should read! Let me know what you think!

More lab improvements!

2009-10-02T13:08:00.000-07:00

We have recently made a number of improvements to our subnet. After getting single-sign-on to work for our Linux machines, Macs, and servers, we have started to work on improving off-campus access for our students. With that in mind, we have installed OpenVPN to give our student virtual private network access to our machines. This means that, even when they are at home, it can feel like they are on our floor (behind the campus firewall). We've even made that work with our single-sign-on configuration so that credentials are automatically retrieved.

Even on our floor, VPN access can be beneficial. The wireless points on our floor are connected to the campus network - not our subnet. This means that access to our servers isn't direct and you run into firewall issues. Using the VPN access bypasses those problems. Therefore, my Mac laptop always has TunnelBlk (the mac Open VPN client) on. And, as a great side benefit, that makes my wireless connection a secure connection even though we don't have secure wireless access points.

Students can read more about how to take advantage of these features by reading about them on the "Equipment Support" website on the cs.ship.edu accounts.

We are working hard to continue to improve our infrastructure. If you have ideas for other changes we should make, please let us know!

Computer Engineering

2009-09-28T11:15:00.000-07:00

We are preparing to propose a new computer engineering degree. As it stands, it includes:

39 credits of computer science including much of our embedded concentration
19 credits of math (calc 1, calc 2, differential equations, discrete math, and statistics)
23 credits of physics (phys I and II, electronics, semi-conductors, and others we are still specifying)

We are hopeful that this will build a bridge between our degree and physics much like computer graphics created a bridge between us and the art programs. In addition, physics is considering revising their applied physics degree to include some of our embedded courses. We think building a stronger relationship with physics will strengthen our programs. What do you all think?

Game-related Clubs

2009-09-24T13:23:00.000-07:00

The final word is: there are TWO game related clubs!!!!!

The mission of the Game Development Club is "to learn how to integrate various skills and talents through the development of video games . . . much attention will be paid to graphics, audio, and game-play." You can find them on facebook and they meet in MCT 165 on Fridays from 2 to 5.

The Game Programming Club in interested in the programming aspects of creating a game including artificial intelligence, networking, physics, graphics and game control. They meet Wednesdays at 6:00 in MCT 165.

Feel free to join the one that interests you more - or join them both!!!

Tutoring News

2009-09-13T19:03:00.000-07:00

Over the past couple of years, we have used a graduate assistant to provide tutoring for all of our 100 and 200 level courses. This year is not exception. You can find Sarah Joseph in the office behind the seminar room throughout the week. We've posted her hours all around the floor, so you should be able to find her. She's finished all of our undergraduate degree, so she can help with most upper division courses, too.

However, this year is special! The Learning Center has hired Tristan Dalius to also be a tutor for our 100 and 200 level courses. He's a great choice for that position and we are very excited that the Learning Center is helping.

It's important that we talk about the role of tutoring in our department. Our faculty work hard to teach their classes well and are always available to give help during office hours. You should avail yourself of those opportunities. However, sometimes you need a different perspective on a topic to understand it well. That's where tutors come into play. Since they are students, they can offer a different take on the material. In addition, they can give you studying tips and practice problems with you. They can be a great help in many ways.

Meeting times for fall

2009-09-08T05:51:00.000-07:00

Fall semester is well under way and our student organizations are getting organized. I thought I'd give some pointers to what they are up to.

Programming Team is planning on meeting Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4:00 in MCT 165. EVERYONE is welcome! In particular, freshmen should consider attending. We know that you don't know much about programming, but the things you see there will give you another perspective on the material you see in CS1.

Our WiCS team will be meeting on Mondays at 6:30 in the cuboid. This semester they are working on building a computer controlled water fountain which will be WAY cool!!!

I'm still waiting to hear from Game Development Club about their meeting times, but I'll keep you posted when I hear . . .

Department Faculty Retreat and Academic Day

2009-08-31T03:50:00.000-07:00

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!

Folding@Home Update

2009-08-23T20:13:00.000-07:00

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!

Preparing for Fall

2009-08-16T17:07:00.001-07:00

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!!!!!!

Folding@Home Milestone - AGAIN!

2009-06-12T08:14:00.000-07:00

Today we broke another Folding@Home milestone! We are now 295th out of 157,000! Last week we added a PS3 to our team, but we can always use more power. If you're interested in joining the team or learning more, check out http://clipper.ship.edu/folding/

Folding@Home Milestone

2009-04-27T05:23:00.000-07:00

Matt Geiman has set up our labs to participate in an important distributed computing project; Folding@Home is a project run by Stanford University that is studying how proteins fold. This research has the possibility of helping us understand how protein folding affects many diseases. You can read more at folding.stanford.edu.

Our big news is that, of 157,000 participating teams, our team has broken into the top 1000! We are currently 905th! Check our progress with up-to-date statistics.

However, we can do better than that! If you'd like to set up your machine to be a part of our team, it's really easy:

There are folding clients available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS's, as well as Playstation 3's. So even if some people don't leave their computer on but they have a PS3, its easy enough to let the game console fold.

Our team name is Shippensburg University Computer Science Department
Our team number is 163348

The Folding@Home site is here: http://folding.stanford.edu/

It can be a little hard to navigate, so here are some useful links that can take a while to find:

To register your username so that no one else claims your work as their own, you can get a passkey emailed to you here:
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/getpasskey.py

You can check if your desired username is in use here:
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Download#ntoc2

I'll keep you posted on our progress!

Programming Team Rocked Slippery Rock

2009-04-06T06:43:00.000-07:00

This weekend the programming team traveled to Slippery Rock to complete in the annual PACISE programming contest. This is where the teams from the state system schools compete. We took three teams. Dane Howard, Logan Kennedy, and Rob Koch were the only team to solve 6 problems and came in first. Casey Boone, Phil Diffenderfer, and Brian Lindsay were the fastest team to solve 5 problems, so they came in second. Tristan Dalius, Matt Hydock, and A.J. Marx were the fasted team to solve two problems and came in fifth.

For our first team, this is a dramatic improvement over the contest at Dickinson the previous weekend. A couple of strategic mis-steps caused us to fall from first to fourth place in the last 30 minutes of the competition. It's a great example of how strategy plays a roll in these events.

Our second team gives us great hope for the future; it includes a freshman (Brian) and a sophomore (Phil) who, if they keep practicing, hold great potential for regional competitions over the next couple of years.

I'll work on getting a picture - took the camera and forgot to use it!

Skin Sensor Trial

2008-12-06T23:08:00.000-08:00

On Friday, we had an official clinical trial of a new device we have built. Last summer, we received a grant to build a device to measure the color of skin by analyzing the reflectivity of the skin at nine different wavelengths. We have built three prototypes of the device and a java application that analyzes the data.

In the trial, we measured the color of 111 participants with our device and with two similar existing commercial devices. In addition, we gathered information on ethnicity, gender, and Fitzpatrick skin type assessments for every participants. We certainly have a lot of data to analyze now!

Professor Briggs becomes Dr. Briggs

2008-11-17T18:42:00.001-08:00

Today, Professor Briggs successfully defended his PhD dissertation. Titled, " Constraint Generation and Reasoning in OWL," it was focused on weaknesses in the current set of semantic web documents in the Swoogle database. In particular, these documents are often not completely specified and Briggs investigated ways to automatically complete those specifications. Those generated restrictions could cause issues with the subsequent reasoning, so Briggs also developed theoretically sound modifications to the standard reasoning rules that detect such problems and can retract everything that was inferred from generated restrictions.

This is an important milestone for our department. Dr. Briggs has been a strong faculty member throughout his tenure with us and we are pleased that he will be able to continue to challenge our students in a wide variety of ways.

WiCS Field Trip

2008-11-16T15:09:00.000-08:00

On Friday, WiCS took a trip to the Volvo PowerTrain plant in Hagerstown to see the robots. Our tour guide, Harold Duffey, was a retired engineer who had a wealth of knowledge about the company, the things that were being manufactured, and the direction Volvo is planning for that facility. While we met our goal of seeing robots in action (and we'll make a podcast to tell you more about that), we also learned a lot about manufacturing in general. It was certainly an insightful tour. We ended the day with a trip to the outlets to learn about dressing for interviews. Here we are at the start of the day:

From Trip to Volvo

Jessica, Megan, Danielle, Missy, Elizabeth, Tina, Harold Duffey, Dr. Armstrong, and Sarah (I took the picture!)

Trip to See Brian Kernighan

2008-11-14T05:51:00.000-08:00

Professors Briggs and Armstrong took a group of students to Johns Hopkins University to see a talk by Brian Kernighan (one of the original authors of C and Unix). He was speaking on "The Changing Face of Programming" and it turned out to be a very interesting talk. The main focus was on programming languages and how they change as the applications we build change. As the discipline moves from software that resides in individual devices to web-based applications, the features required by a language change dramatically. On the way home, the discussion continued with how this shift in application-type could also affect the demands on the operating systems we develop.

ACM Programming Competition

2008-10-27T18:52:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday our programming team competed in the ACM's Mid-Atlantic Regional Programming Competition and fared quite well! A total of 146 teams competed at sites all over the region. We had three teams competing and all three solved at least one problem. That shows a depth rivaled by few teams from schools of our size. Rob Koch, Brian Lindsay and Missy Lewis solved three problems placing 17th overall; Jessica Burns, Elizabeth Jones, and Andrew Marx solved two problems placing 71st overall; and Casey Boone, Phil Diffenderfer, and Logan Kennedy solved one problem placing 97th overall.

I see great promise in these results and, with a few changes to how we run things, I think we'll excel in the contests this Spring. Anyone know where next year's world final will be?!

Unfortunately, I was so busy playing site director that I forgot to take pictures. I hope someone else came through on that front . . . Sorry!

Game Programming Club?

2008-09-15T18:00:00.000-07:00

There's a rumor that some of our students have banded together to create a game programming club. I think that's terrific and I'm glad they are having fun. However, I'd like to do what I can to help you be an official club (the university and department can support you better that way). Can anyone who knows any details help me connect with the leaders of this rebel crew?

It Begins!

2008-08-24T15:00:00.000-07:00

Fall semester has officially started with the first meeting of the WiCS Crew (that's Women in Computer Science). We are working on a couple of podcasts based on robotics, so today we started building two types of robots.

Here are Missy, Jody, Sarah, and Logan building a WAO Cranius:

And this is Megan, Jessica, and Tina building a pan/tilt robot with a bioloid robot set.

We'll let you know when the resulting podcasts are available.

Welcome to fall!

Fall Approaches . . .

2008-08-15T20:28:00.000-07:00

We are busy getting ready for fall and have made a few of changes to our spaces.

First, MCT 163 will no longer be an open lab. We're turning it into research space to support the various undergraduate research projects that are starting. It will give each of our research huddles a work space and a computer. This should give those project more resources and visibility, so we're hoping that it will enrich that aspect of our programs.

Second, the "zoid" (seminar room) and the department secretary's office have switched spaces. Mrs. Kann is very happy to have a window and the only downside for the seminar room is that we'll have to come up with a new name for it since it's no longer a trapezoid. Suggestions.

Third, with the retirement of Dr. Thomas, I have moved my office into his old office. We will re-purpose my old office into either a lab or space for our tutors. I'm happy to be out where I'm easier to find and I think it'll be a much more valuable use of my space.

Fourth, you may notice my reference to "tutors." We will have two graduate students who will be responsible for providing tutoring for all of our lower division (100 and 200 level) courses. Please take advantage of this!

Finally, we are welcoming a new faculty member: Dr. Alice Armstrong. Her office is between Briggs and Lee. Please stop by and welcome her to our department!

As always, I'm really looking forward to everyone coming back and our freshman class looks really strong. It should be a good year!

A Big Weekend

2008-04-25T09:13:00.000-07:00

Last weekend held two significant events for us: a programming competition and a research symposium.

Our Programming Team competed at the annual Dickinson contest and made us proud! The first time, consisting of Philip Diffenderfer, Matthew Hydock, Casey Boone solved four problems and came in second overall. Our second team of Elizabeth Jones and Missy Lewis solved three problems, too. Our team is developing a lot of depth. Click to see the results.

I also had the privilege of taking six of our students the SJU's Sigma Chi Research Symposium to present their grant-funded or senior research. Senior research projects were presented by Matthew Gilbert, Brandon Wilson, Justin DeVage, Wesley Gibson, and Seth Theilemann. Sarah Joseph presented the grant-funded research she and Logan Kennedy have been working on.

PACISE 2008

2008-04-06T18:20:00.000-07:00

The Programming Team just returned from this year's trip to the PACISE programming competition. While we didn't place, our top team solve 2 3/4 problems (ask them how that makes any sense!) and we think we're much more prepared for the upcoming contest at Dickinson. Here's a team photo including our mascot:

from left to right: Sarah Joseph, Nathasha Gunasekara (holding Fluffy), Elizabeth Jones, Phil Diffenderfer, Logan Kennedy, and Casey Boone.

Versatile Seminar

2008-04-02T18:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, two developers from Versatile Systems, Ryan Bohn (who is an alum of our program and a member of our Industrial Advisory Council) and Bill Kratzer gave a very useful seminar which was highly reviewed by those who attended.

It was titled "Working in Software Development After College... a.k.a. A Day
in the Life at Versatile Systems".

And here is its abstract:

Bill Kratzer and Ryan Bohn love their jobs. They work for a small to
mid-sized software and consulting company in Central Pennsylvania where
they solve really hard problems and are always in the business of trying
to build and deploy software for their ever-demanding customers. Bill
and Ryan will share with students what they do every day, what they
love/hate about their jobs, what things they do well/not-so-well, what
software technologies are gaining steam, and what things they look for
in college students who are looking jobs.

We think seminars like these are very valuable for our students and we'd welcome similar presentations from other industrial partners.

Deadlock in Legos

2008-04-01T13:11:00.001-07:00

Rob Koch was playing with Legos in the Zoid and came up with these to ways of animating properties associated with deadlock.

One shows the conditions causing deadlock (circular wait, non-preemption, mutual exclusion, and hold and wait) while the other shows each of those conditions being prevented. Can you tell which is which?

Robotics Final Exam

2007-12-15T21:28:00.000-08:00

Our Robotics class had a new competition for its final exam. The goal was to gather as many lights as possible and store them at your end of the playing field. It turned out to be quite a challenge and great fun to watch:

You can see the individual photos by clicking on the link at the lower right of the player.

GPS Tour

2007-11-29T06:38:00.000-08:00

One of the teams in our Embedded/Realtime course is gaining some recognition. They are building an application for handheld (Windows CE) devices utilizing a GPS add-on device. The goal is to produce an application that would help perspective students tour campus at their own pace.
The admissions office would have a set of handheld devices that they could loan to prospective students and their families. As they walks around campus, the device highlights the buildings that are close by and the user can see information about each building.
The team, consisting of Joshua Buzzard, Stephen Nowell, John Yackovich and (recently added) Brian Clarke presented a prototype to University President Dr. Ruud who was quite impressed with the project. They will be continuing development into the Spring when they will present it to the Board of Governors.

Surface Mount Soldering

2007-11-08T14:33:00.000-08:00

This week, if MCT 164 is open, check it out! An alum has loaned our Embedded class the equipment necessary to do surface mount soldering. That means that our students can practice mounting chips whose pins do not go through the circuit board. Instead the chip sits on top of the circuit board and the solder joints at the pins also secure the chip to the board. This certainly requires a steady hand as the joints are small enough that a microscope is required to see them as you create them. This is certainly a unique opportunity for those students and we really appreciate Ed Bockhoeffer for loaning the equipment. Check it out!

Department Video

2007-10-16T11:05:00.001-07:00

I have been tasked with making a video that we could hand to prospective students that shows them all of the cool stuff we have going on. Last week at FIE, I kept saying, "Boy, we do it better than that!" so I'm sure we have a lot of stuff to show off. Here are the things that I've thought of to include:

the embedded course projects

the robotics course projects

the ACM contest

some classes working on labs

I would also like some clips of students saying what they think is good about our program. If you're interested in helping, please let me know.

Also, if you have other ideas for things we should showcase or how the video should look (or sound?), I'm open to suggestions. When I was in grad school studying AI, it never occurred to be that this is what I'd be doing!

Traveling, again

2007-10-13T09:07:00.001-07:00

This week, Dr. Lee and I have been away at Frontiers in Education (FIE) in Milwaukee. I hate missing a class (though I'm sure they are working on the homework I gave them :) ) and I know that we are getting into scheduling time, so many of you are looking for me this week. From that, you can assume that I think attending this conference is very important. FIE is a conference that is solely focused on engineering education predominantly at the undergraduate level. In the sessions I have visited, I have seen innovations in how CS1 is taught, how team project courses are managed, how students are recruited, and how programs are assessed.

Much of what I have seen shows me how good our programs are. When I talk with people about what we are doing in CS1, they are impressed that our freshman can handle test-driven development. When I talk with people about our WiCS program, they are impressed with the motivation of our students and the quality of the videos and the website. As always, I'm proud of what we are doing.

In addition, I have picked up some ideas about ways to assess our project courses and new ways of looking at grading those courses. I also think that the things I saw about CS1 confirm the direction we are going.

Any way, being away gives me some time to reflect and plan, but I'm looking forward to getting back to campus. If you've been looking for me to talk about scheduling, I promise I'll be around a lot next week!

New WiCS Equipment

2007-10-05T11:19:00.000-07:00

This summer, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences bought a new camera and microphone for our WiCS team. As a result, the format of the podcasts has been improved and we're able to look at a whole new set of topics for the videos. Our latest one is on spell checking. Check it out at the WiCS website .

Leaving a comment or emailing the podcast to a friend requires that you create a login for the website. It's easy to do and you might win something, so don't be deterred! The WiCS team would love to hear your comments.

Department Google Calendar

2007-09-02T07:23:00.000-07:00

I'm looking for more ways to let everyone know about what's going on in the department. My latest idea is a public Google calendar. I'm going to hook it into the department homepage soon, but, in the mean time, you can see it pretty easily. You need a gmail account (if you don't have one, let me know and I'll give you one). When you've logged onto gmail, you can go to Google calendar. From there, on the left side of the screen, there's a button to add a new calendar. Just search for "Shippensburg University Computer Science Department" which is a public calendar and you'll see everything that's going on!

If you have an event that you'd like me to add to the calendar, just let me know! Which reminds me: when are we having a movie night to watch Tron?

Agile 2007

2007-08-17T07:10:00.000-07:00

This week, I've been away at the Agile 2007 Conference and it occurred to me that you might wonder why we go to conferences.

There are three communities that we try to keep in touch with: other educators, people in industry and people doing research in areas similar to ours. Connections with those people help us stay up-to-date and help us innovate in our curriculum, classrooms, and research.

Agile 2007 is a strongly industry-focused conference. Probably 95% of the attendees are associated with developing software from people in the trenches to upper management. It's a great time to see new tools and techniques that teams are using to create high quality software quickly. For me, it confirmed that the content in our Testing and XP course is up-to-date (though I think we'll add continuous integration this spring). It also confirms that my consulting activities are current, though I picked up a few tricks here and there.

Agile 2007 also had an educator's symposium for people to talk about how they are teaching agile methods. It included talks on project courses at other schools and I presented the innovations we have made to CS1 (I've presented our project course to a number of venues in the past). You can see the project I presented on here (Click on TDD in CS1). On this front, we are definitely on the leading edge. People were very surprised that freshmen can master TDD while learning everything else they need to learn in that course. I think a lot of people will be watching the labs develop and using them in their courses, too.

Any way, this conference confirmed that our technology is up-to-date. In October, I'll be heading to Frontiers in Education which is entirely focused on teaching. I'll let you know what I learn.

We're Getting Ready . . .

2007-07-28T18:25:00.000-07:00

I know it seems like it's the middle of summer to you, but I'm busy getting ready for school to start! I can't wait until the students return - it's always more fun when they are here.

I've finished with freshmen orientation. Though they didn't heckle me like last year's group, I heard some good questions and everyone seemed enthused (many of you saw Professor Briggs as he covered for me while I was out of town - my thanks to him!). Your schedules are almost complete and you should be receiving them soon. Remember - read early!

I have a new innovation to try this year: a Google department calendar. It's title is "Shippensburg University Computer Science Department" and you should be able to search for it and view it from your google calendar (if you need a google account, let me know - I can hook you up!). So far, it doesn't have much, but when you all get back and we set times for programming team, ACM, the research discussion group, and everything else, it'll fill up fast. I'm hoping this will keep everyone aware of the variety of things that are going on. Let me know if you can't see it . . .

If you have any other ideas for things we should try in the fall, let me know!

We got a CRA-W Research Grant!

2007-07-03T20:56:00.000-07:00

Our Software Engineering Huddle has some big news: two students and I just received a research grant from the Computing Research Association's Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research! The program that is providing the funding is their Collaborative Research
Experience for Undergraduates in Computer Science and Engineering and we are very proud to have been selected.

The team consists of Sarah Joseph (a junior CS major), Logan Kennedy (a sophomore CS major) and me. The grant provides the students with a stipend for their work. We will be investigating how tools can help agile software development practices be adopted by large or distributed teams. We will develop a number of desktop widgets to disseminate information like build status and metrics like unit test passing rates. We will publish these widgets through the open source community to gather information on their usefulness. In addition, we will be investigating intra-team communication strategies used in agile teams in order to design tools to help large teams match the communication strategies of small teams.

We'll be publishing our progress on a web site, but that isn't up yet. When it is, I'll let you know so you can see the cool things we do.

Summer Travel

2007-06-14T19:36:00.000-07:00

I just thought I'd catch you up on some of the things the faculty are doing this summer.

Dr. Mao is just returning from a tour of Asia. He presented research papers in Korea and China. Those papers were co-authored with Dr. Lee and Shannon Kelly who was one of our graduate students who graduated this May.

Professor Briggs continues to work on his dissertation and is making good progress. In addition, he has done some consulting with a company in Chambersburg helping them configure their e-commerce web server with the latest server software.

I attended a three day workshop on Program Assessment at the University of Delaware. It was run by Middle States (who accredits the University) and I learned that our assessment is pretty strong. I picked up a few pointers, but mostly I confirmed the direction we took as part of our ABET accreditation. Later this summer, I'll be attending Agile 2007 in Washington, D.C. to present a paper on the changes we've made to Computer Science I as we have introduced test-driven development into the curriculum. I, too, have spent some time consulting and, as a result, have gained some insights that will be valuable in my Metrics and Process Management course this fall. I'm really looking to that class!

I hope everyone's summer is going well. The logs I've read on your internships sound really interesting - keep up the good work!

Graduation

2007-05-15T04:41:00.000-07:00

As I finish up my grading (no, I have not finished grading the 210 papers!), graduation is already complete. This year, 23 seniors and 10 Masters students graduated. As I look at the lists, there are people there of which I'm very proud. Students who have completed their degrees after interruptions for serving in Iraq, students who have overcome personal challenges, and, students that have posed interesting questions in my classes.

I love going to graduation because it's a good time to stop and think about what we've done (good and bad) and where we're headed. While these students have been here, we've changed our curriculum, gotten our accreditation and begun to create an undergraduate research program. As I look forward, we're working on ways to grow that undergraduate research program and to improve our M.S. degree.

Summer is generally quiet, but keep an eye - I'll try to post some news about our interns as I receive it. Besides, summer's too quiet if I don't hear from any of you!

Enjoy!

New and funny WiCS podcast episode

2007-05-11T19:42:00.000-07:00

The WiCS team has been filming episodes of their podcast so that we could publish them all summer. However, yesterday they finished one that was so cool that they decided to put it out early. It's on the technology that the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency uses to coordinate responses to emergencies. I know, that doesn't sound wildly cool. The cool part is that it's a parody of Dragnet! It was fun to make and I think it's fun to watch. Check in out at the WiCS page. Please leave comments and check out the other episodes, too!

Flex-mania

2007-05-04T13:59:00.000-07:00

Check out the snacks in my office! Tina and Sarah had too much flex at the end of the term, so they've stored snacks that'll keep them filled next fall! Thanks to Seth for the help in toting!

Movie Night

2007-05-03T14:17:00.000-07:00

Last night we had the first of many department movie nights. We started with the standard pizza and subs:

Then we watched Serenity.

We had so much fun that we decided we should do it every month. We'll start on the first Wednesday of classes with the movie Tron

See you then!

May Pole

2007-05-03T14:10:00.000-07:00

Every now and then I walk into a classroom and see something surprising that the students have done. This one took me by surprise:

Up close, you can see that it's a May Pole made out of markers:

I thought the markers had some other purpose . . .

This Year's Academic Awards

2007-05-01T09:25:00.000-07:00

Sunday was the day of University's Academic Awards Ceremony. As always, we had a large number of students who earned awards.

From left to rights:

Andrew Richwine (Senior Outstanding Grade Point Average
James Dibble (Honor Recipient, Senior Outstanding Grade Point Average)
Timothy Sherald (Senior Outstanding Grade Point Average)
John C. Yackovich (Senior Outstanding Grade Point Average)
Peter J. Fisher (Senior Outstanding Grade Point Average)
Vincent P. Sockalosky (Senior Outstanding Grade Point Average)

Not Pictured:

David M. Dahan (Senior Outstanding Grade Point Average)
Alexander J. Hoffer (Senior Outstanding Grade Point Average)
Wesley J. Holevinski (Senior Outstanding Grade Point Average)
Logan H. Kennedy (Freshman Outstanding Grade Point Average)
Dominic J. Luminello (Senior Outstanding Grade Point Average)
Kevin C. McCullough (Who's Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges, Senior Outstanding Grade Point Average)
Stephen C. Nowell (Senior Outstanding Grade Point Average)
Jonathan P. Oram (Sophomore Outstanding Grade Point Average)
Cella M. Sum (Honor Recipient, Senior Outstanding Grade Point Average)

Be sure to congratulate them when you see them!

Friday really was a big day!

2007-04-28T18:46:00.000-07:00

Friday lived up to its billing! First, the posters of our senior research projects went up in the halls.

Check them out - and don't forget to look at the one behind Helena's desk.

Second, our Industrial Advisory Council met on Friday. They reviewed some changes we are considering in our Masters degrees and gave us some solid feedback on our ten year plan. We certainly have some things to think about as a result of their visit! Here they are talking with Professors Mao, Briggs, Lee and Girard:

From left to right: Lanorde Wheeler, Todd Moyer, Ben Breech, Steven Mentzer and Brian Cozzens.

These alumni are incredibly valuable to our program and we thank them for their feedback and all the other ways they interact with our students and faculty!

Upsilon Pi Epsilon

2007-04-26T18:52:00.000-07:00

Tonight was our annual induction in our chapter of the Upsilon Pi Epsilon Honor Society. These students are our top performing students as demonstrated by their grades or other achievements. Our faculty select them carefully and we are very proud of their accomplishments! Here are this year's students inductees with the current UPE Officers:

Front row: Andrew Richwine, Cella Sum, and John Yackovitch
Back row: Peter Fisher, James Dibble, Vince Sockalosky, Joshua Buzzard, Justin Devage, Wesley Gibson, John Seth Theileman, Andrew J. Hoffer, and Tim Sherrald.

This year's honorary inductee was Todd Moyer. He is a 1999 graduate from our graphics concentration whose work involves developing the software for air traffic control systems. He has served on our industrial advisory board for five years and helped our WiCS team produce a podcast on air traffic control software. We are pleased to honor him this way.

Our officers (James Dibble, Vince Sockalosky, and Tim Sherrald) did a wonderful job of leading the ceremony:

Here is Professor Briggs bragging about the interesting projects he's been able to do with this batch of students:

It was a wonderful night. I always enjoy meeting the parents and talking with the alumni that come back to visit. I'm looking forward to next year's ceremony and the people that I expect we'll be inducting then . . .

WiCS Field Trip to PEMA and the Capital

2007-04-24T17:07:00.000-07:00

Today was an exciting day for our WiCS team. Two weeks ago, James Powers, Pennsylvania's Director of Homeland Security, came to campus to give a seminar on the technology behind homeland security. When the WiCS team expressed interest in producing a podcast on this technology, Mr. Powers offered to take us on a field trip to gather more information. So, today, we went on a two-part field trip.

First, we visited the Emergency Operations Center at the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency where we learned about the technology they leverage to deal with emergencies as they happen.

Second, we visited the capital building. After seeing the wonderful architecture, the House and Senate in action, we met with the Lieutenant Governor who expressed enthusiasm about our podcasts and our interest in homeland security.

Watch for our next podcast episode as it will have more of the details of what we learned today!

Friday will be a big day

2007-04-23T18:33:00.000-07:00

This Friday, our Industrial Advisory Council will be visiting. The council is made up of alumni and people from local industrial partners. They come once or twice a year to review what we are doing to help us ensure that our programs maintain their quality as technology moves. This time, they're going to look at our ten year plan, and some curriculum revisions we are considering.

While they are here, they also review our senior research projects, so you will see those appearing on the walls of the halls this week. Read and enjoy them!

In addition, they like to meet with students to get their impressions of our programs and the directions in which we are moving. If you would be interested in visiting with them, please email me your availability for Friday and I'll try to pick the time when the most students are available.

WiCS Podcast Passes 1000 Dowloads!!!

2007-04-17T05:41:00.000-07:00

The "Where is the Software?" podcast produced by our Women in Computer Science team has passed a significant milestone: as of this morning, we have 1003 downloads! Our six episodes have an average of 167 downloads. The Malware episode is leading with a total of 250 downloads.

Check out all of the episodes at http://webspace.ship.edu/wics and use the comment section to give them your feedback!

BitLeap wins Technology Provider of the Year

2007-04-16T20:55:00.000-07:00

In March, BitLeap was awarded Technology Provider of the Year by the Technology Council of Central Pennsylvania. This is important news for us because their two lead engineers, Lindsay Snider and Ian Berry, are alumni of our program and one of their interns, Seth Theileman, is a current student. The criteria for the award is "Company must be a developer of current technologies and must have at least one product line that has achieved or has the potential to achieve a significant market impact, and/or the status of a transforming technology for future innovation."

We are very proud of BitLeap! Check them out!

Start of a department news blog

2007-04-16T20:52:00.000-07:00

I have to admit that keeping up with the department video podcast has been overwhelming. Taking the time to write the script, record it, and edit it is keeping me from spreading important news about our department and our alumni. Therefore, I'm going to try this route of communication as an alternative.

We are always looking for feedback, so please engage in the conversations here - let us know what you like and what you think we could do better. To start, how do you like a blog as opposed to a podcast?