This project is supported in part by funds from
the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Link-to-Learn Project
for Information Technology Workforce Development (I-Grad)
We expect the new and revised classes in system administration and networking to benefit approximately 100 UPG students in Information Science, Computer Science and Management Information Systems who will take these classes either as required classes or as electives. As students have been asking for more hands-on experiences in their classes, we expect them to be enthusiastic about the new class and new labs. The system administration class and the networking class , with their accompanying labs, are intended as second year classes for Information Science students. The successful completion of these two classes will give students the theoretical and practical knowledge needed to qualify them for positions as student assistants in our UPG computer labs and for internships with local employers. We anticipate that the experiences gained in those practical positions will prove very helpful to our students in securing jobs upon graduation.
We chose a course in system administration as the focus of our curriculum realignment efforts because the title and typical content associated with system administration matches very closely the skills we have identified as necessary for our students, but not available in our current program. In the survey of Pittsburgh and Greensburg Information Science students, system administration was frequently mentioned as a course that should be added to the curriculum. The purpose of the course in system administration class is to acquaint students with the field of system administration and to provide opportunities for hands-on practice of system administration tasks.
Course Description: Introduction to principles of system planning, configuration, management and security. Lectures build upon basic concepts in computer architecture, operating systems and network models. Topics include system configuration, performance and process management, system policies, user profiles and security issues such as risk assessment, business continuation planning and testing, and intrusion prevention and detection. The course includes a laboratory component in which students practice system administration tasks within the Windows 2000 and Linux environments.
We have been offering a networking or telecommunications course as a distance-learning course from the Department of Information Sciences and Telecommunications at the Pittsburgh campus. The addition of a new IT faculty member in Fall 2000 makes it possible for us to offer the networking course ourselves and to propose a curriculum change that adds a laboratory component to the course.
Our existing networking course (INFSCI 1004- Telecommunications) provides an introduction to concepts in data communications, local area networking, wide area networking and internetworking. The proposed addition of a lab component for the networking course will give students hands-on experience with networking tasks. Item #9 also contains a description and list of topics and lab activities for the networking course.
Course Description: Information Science 1004 is an introductory course in networking. It provides students with the background necessary to understand the communications component of contemporary information systems. The course is designed to help students master the hardware and software concepts behind computer networks. The laboratory portions of the course provide hands-on experience in networking activities. The course will emphasize issues related to the Internet and the client/server model of computing.