Computer Science 550, Spring 2006 Syllabus

Allegheny College

Department of Computer Science

Gregory M. Kapfhammer

Instructor Contact Information

Instructor Office Hours

For more details about my schedule, please refer to http://cs.allegheny.edu/~gkapfham/schedule/.

Please feel free to contact me via email if I am not in my office. If you need to schedule an appointment, you may call my office or my home. I am often able to schedule student meetings at times outside of office hours.

Course Meeting Schedule

Course meetings will be scheduled every other week and at the need of the student. Every student in the course will be responsible for pro-actively seeking out the Instructor in order to ensure that he or she correctly provides all of the needed deliverables.

Course Objectives

In this class we will develop a working listing of career and internship resources, explore your career and internship interests, and write proposals for the internships that you will undertake this summer. We will also listen to presentations given by students who have previously completed meaningful internships. The course will help students to learn more about the field of computing, the positions that are available to Allegheny computer scientists, and the preparations that are useful to secure an interesting and meaningful internship.

Performance Objectives

At the completion of this class, a student should be familiar with the resources that are provided on the Internet for learning about careers and internships. The student should have career researching skills. Also, the student should have a better understanding of the computing sub-disciplines in which they are interested in pursuing during their career or graduate school experiences. Finally, the student should have developed a high-quality resume and a proposal for the work that they will be involved with during their summer internship.

Grading Policies

The grade that a student receives in this class will be based on class participation, the final resume, the career interest statement, the final description of career resources, the secured internship, and the proposal for the summer internship experience. Since this class will only meet once every other week, students will be required to actively participate in class discussions. Remember, this class will be taken for a letter grade!

Required Information Packet

1. Final Resume

2. Two Page Career Interest Statement

3. Two Page Description of Career Resources

4. Secured Internship

5. Two Page Internship Proposal

Students will be expected to "workshop" their resume with the Instructor and the staff in the Office of Career Services (OCS). Members of the Office of Career Services will be able to provide the student will invaluable advice concerning resumes, internship opportunities, and careers. A student's career interest statement must describe the types of careers in which a student is interested. However, this document should go beyond the basic statement of a job description and also include information about preferred geographical location, technologies that the student is interested in using, types of software the student would like to develop, etc. Each student will be responsible for the creation of a document that describes the career and internship resources that they found to be the most valuable. For example, a student might desire to create a listing of different web sites and books that they found useful. However, this listing should also include a description of the strengths and weaknesses of these resources. Finally, each student must secure an internship and write a short proposal (in conjunction with the staff members at their chosen company) to describe the work that they will conduct.

Honor Code

The Academic Honor Program that governs the entire academic program at Allegheny College is described on pages nine and ten of the Allegheny Course Catalog. The Honor Program applies to all work that is submitted for academic credit or to meet non-credit requirements for graduation at Allegheny College. This includes all work done in class (such as examinations, quizzes, and laboratory work), all papers, and any other material that might be assigned in this class. All students who have enrolled in the College will work under the Honor Program. Each student who has matriculated at Allegheny College has acknowledged the following pledge:

I hereby recognize and pledge to fulfill my responsibilities, as defined in the Honor Code, and to maintain the integrity of both myself and the College community as a whole.

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