“CSE Volunteers” -- Computer Science and
Engineering students to assist Hillsborough
County Information & Technology Division
Ken Christensen
Dewey Rundus
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University of South Florida
Tampa, FL 33620
Email: {christen, rundus}@csee.usf.edu
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Hillsborough County K-12 proposal – July 22, 2004
Who we are (department)
 Department of Computer Science and Engineering
 A department in the College of Engineering
 Founded in 1980
 22 faculty
 Over 400 undergraduate students
 About 150 graduate students
 Many of our graduates are employed in the Tampa Bay area
 Employed by major high tech firms and government agencies
• Honeywell, IBM, Raytheon, and others
• Hillsborough country and others
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Who we are (people)
 Ken Christensen
 Joined USF in 1995
 PhD from North Carolina State University
 Licensed Professional Engineer in the state of Florida
 Industry experience at IBM and NASA-KSC
 Teach and research in computer networks
 Dewey Rundus
 Joined USF in 1972
 PhD from Stanford University
 Associate chair
 Teach and research in user interface design
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Goals
 Our goals in this project are to:
1) Provide a community service opportunity for our students
2) Give our student meaningful “real world” experience
Providing technical assistance to Hillsborough County
K-12 Information & Technology Division can satisfy
both of these goals!
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Project plan
 USF student pairs to be assigned to I&T projects
 Serve as assistants to I&T support representatives
 Be assigned to schools as needed
 Time commitment:
 Four hours per week for academic semester
 Skills:
 Our students have a range of skills
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Basic Wintel PC skills (Windows administration)
Sophisticated data base, server, and network administration
Web site development
Other
 Academic credit:
 Students receive 1 credit hour of independent study
 This is service-based learning
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Project plan continued
 Supervision
 Ken Christensen to supervise students on USF side
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Weekly status
Some site visits
Periodic on-campus meetings
End of semester “awards banquet” (pizza?)
 Evaluation
 Fall is our “guinea pig” semester
 Will evaluate for continuation into Spring
 Long term plan is to get corporate support
• Limited support for students (e.g., for transportation costs)
• Funds for technology supplies for Hillsborough County
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Project plan continued
 Fall 2004…
 17 students have expressed an interest so far
 More will come in, but some will drop out too
 It is reasonable to expect 5 to 8 student pairs
 Need a kick-off meeting with I&T staff
 Should occur before Hillsborough County school year starts
We look forward to getting to work!
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