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Summer 2006
Dr. Rahman Tashakkori hosted the Visualization and Computing Teacher's Workshop, which brought twenty high-school Mathematics and Science teachers together for five days to learn about online
resources for different subjects and to learn about some of the latest technologies used in the instruction of these subjects. The workshop was made possible with the funding and support from Academic Affairs, the Math and Science
Education Center, the College of Arts and Sciences at Appalachian, and the Shodor Foundation. Click here for more information.
Mr. Adam Reagan earned his M.S. degree in August defending the thesis, A Non-linear Statistical Approach to Knowledge Discovery in Medical Images.Dr. Rahman Tashakkori directed the thesis. Other recent M.S. degrees
awarded include: Mr. Justin Fincher defending Automated Composition of Musical Scores Based on the Style of Previous Works directed by Prof. Kenneth Jacker; and, Mr. Gary Kreahling defending Task Analysis of Weather Forecasting and Implications for Design of Computer Forecasting Tools under the direction of
Dr. Ray Russell.
Dr. Ed Pekarek retired after 28 years with the department. He'll be missed. Here are some pictures from a party to honor him.
Spring 2006
Dr. Ray Russell
presented a paper entitled "Understanding the
Forecasting Process and Implications for Computing Tool
Design" at the 23rd Conference on
Interactive Information Processing Systems (IIPS) for
Meteorology, Oceanography, and Hydrology. The paper
makes recommendations for the user interface design of
computing tools used by weather forecasters. Graduate
student
Gary Kreahling
co-authored the paper and will complete his master's
thesis on the subject.
Students in Dr. Barry
Kurtz's CS 4667 Software Engineering course this
semester are not actually upside down, but the
course is somewhat "inverted" from typical courses.
Lectures are received through video podcasts
outside of class while students work on the course
group project during class sessions. The project extends
the Appalcart TRIP (TRavel Itinerary Planner) system
initiated by students in the course last fall. Code is
being developed both in Java and in the .NET environment
using C#. These software components interact with each
other through web service interfaces.
Visitors to the CAP building would have good reason to
think that robots have invaded Boone! Students in Dr. Dee Parks' CS 4440
Artificial Intelligence course have been busy building
robots. Turns out building them is the easy part.
Programming their behavior is the real challenge! Check
out this
photo collage!
Fall 2005
Dr. Tashakkori recently
participated in an education outreach workshop at the Supercomputing '05
conference. This effort, Image/Vision Based Problem
Solving,
investigated and developed image
visualization curricula. Also participating were Darren Greene,
CS graduate student, Dr. Steve Williams from the AppState Chemistry
department, Dr. Trina Palmer from the AppState Mathematical Sciences
department, and five teachers from
Watauga High School.
Outsourcing and offshoring fears are blown out of
proportion.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics reports IT job growth
of 17% from 1999-2004 and 8% in the last year of the survey!
In fact, there were more IT jobs in 2004 than there were in
2000 before "the bubble burst!"
In addition, IT job wages have
grown 4-7% during this time period, with one report of
average starting salaries ranging from $44,000 to $51,000.
Yet, CS program enrollment
nationwide is down sharply.
Can you hear the opportunity knocking?! Come on in...
Prof. Barry recently made a presentation on
Project ClockIt: Profiling and Improving Student Software Development Practices at the
Frontiers in Education conference. The paper
was co-authored by Dr. Norris.
Congratulations to Dr. Wilkes on the safe arrival of his 8 pound 6 ounce
bundle of joy! Zion Lee Wilkes was born at 11:25 am on Sunday, Oct 23.
Dr. Kurtz recently presented a paper on
Teaching OO Methodology in a Project-Driven CS2 Course at
the OOPSLA Educator Symposium. The paper was
co-authored by Prof. Barry, Dr. Wilkes,
and Chris Ellsworth, one of our
graduate students.
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