CIS Department > Grants & Projects > Information Technology Workforce Development Grant Project

Project Milestones

April - June, 2000

An advisory board meeting was held on April 18, 2000.
The initial project web site was created, including pages for online mentoring and women in computing.
A group of volunteer mentors has been recruited.
Project partners have made available a number of internships, and some of these internship positions have already been filled.
Purchases planned for the first quarter have been made.
Faculty have signed up for training classes as planned.
A draft of a brochure describing grant project activities has been completed.
A student worker has been hired to assist with the project.

July - September, 2000

Faculty members have attended classes on the Oracle database and Windows 2000 Professional and Server.
Nine internships have been offered by our K-12 and business partners. Six of these have been filled.
The project web site has been updated and the email-based mentoring for students has begun. Additional mentors have volunteered among our business partners and alumni and some students have already signed up to participate in the mentoring program.
The hardware and software items purchased in the previous quarter have been installed.
CS 321 and CS 330 have been revised to include new material and training videos on Oracle and Windows 2000 have been purchased.
A brochure describing grant project activities has been mailed to prospective students with an interest in technology.

September - December, 2000

An advisory board meeting was held on November 2, 2000.
Guest lecture for St. Vincent students in the Data Communications class on the topic of web page development using Active Server Pages, JavaScript, and Dynamic HTML.
Guest lecture for St. Vincent students by Rich Muchoney of Latrobe Brewing Company on "Information Technology's Significance in Strategic Business Planning".
The project web site has been updated with new information and some JavaScript enhancements.
Revisions to CS 321 and CS 330 have been carried out in class.
Initial planning has been carried out for Computing Career Day (see below) as well as for the summer mini-camp for girls (to be held June 18 and 19, 2001).

January - March, 2001

Computing Career Day was held at Saint Vincent College on Feb 26, 2001. About 80 students in grades 8 through 12 attended. CIS department faculty and industry representatives from Marconi Communications and Timken Latrobe Steel talked with students about computing careers, the shortage of IT professionals (especially women), and gave brief technology demos.
On March 2, 2001, Br. David Carlson visited the Computer Club at Christ the Divine Teacher school. About 10 students had the opportunity to see and use a simulation of a robot. Several of the students even learned to modify the program that instructs the robot how to move through the maze. This was, then, an introduction to programming.

April - June, 2001

Guest lecture for St. Vincent students in CS 290 by Dennis Fetter of Westinghouse Specialty Metals Plant on the topic of Visual Basic Software Development.
An advisory board meeting was held on April 5.
The main grant project hardware and software purchases were made, including the new PCs and server.
The first CIS intern for the grant project has been hired.
Our first Computer Mini-Camp for girls was held on June 17 through 19, with 18 girls attending. Here are some comments from the participants:
- I loved this. The people...were great.
- I think this was a great experience...
- I really enjoyed working with HTML and the web pages.

July - September, 2001

The main hardware and software items were installed and have made a fine improvement for students studying Information Technology and Computer Science.
The second CIS intern for the grant project has been hired and is assisting with this hardware and software. This is also a great opportunity for the intern to learn practical IT skills.

October - December, 2001

Guest lecture on ATM networking was held for the Data Communications class.
The advisory board met on Thursday, Nov 15, 2001 to plan the ongoing grant project activities.
The CIS department received a National Science Foundation grant under the Computer Science, Engineering, and Mathematics program (grant number DUE-0122934). This grant provides scholarship money for Saint Vincent College CIS majors. In addition it continues the work begun by the Link-to-Learn project's advisory board, especially in providing internships, mentoring, and career awareness opportunities.
The third CIS intern for the grant project has been hired.

January - March, 2002

Computing Day 2002 was held at Saint Vincent College on Feb 25, 2002. About 65 students in grades 7 through 12 attended.
A couple of guest lectures on cryptology were given for CS 171, Discrete Structures II.

April - June, 2002

A guest lecture on Oracle database programming was held on April 12 in the advanced database class (CS 352).
The advisory board meeting was held on Thursday, April 18.
A number of the senior projects were real-world projects this year, including educational software designed for a local classroom for the handicapped, software to replace the paperwork in the college's own Dean of Students' office, and a web site for a local school (which happens to be one of our grant project partners).
A presentation and hands-on computer activity was held for the sixth grade computer class at Sacred Heart School on May 23. The purpose of the activity was to have students try some programming in a fun environment and to promote interest in a possible future career in computing.
The Summer Computer Mini-Camp for Girls was held on June 17 through 19.
A new server was installed and various smaller infrastructure improvements were made.

During 2000 - 2002 this project was supported in part by funds from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Link-to-Learn Project.
Go to the main ITWD Grant Project Page

Maintained by: Br. David Carlson
Last updated: August 03, 2006

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