John D. Fernandez

Agile Project Management —Agilism versus Traditional Approaches

For decades now, corporations have been changing from a hierarchical approach to project management to being more collaborative as knowledge work has grown in importance. In the center of increased globalization is the need for project managers to have flexibility in a project system in order to be able to adjust constantly to emerging challenges and opportunities. The need to distribute responsibility and initiative in support of adaptation to change is familiar territory to “agile” approaches to projects. In this paper, Agile Project Management will be examined from its historical practices and applicability of this style of project management to more traditional approaches to project management. Agile Project Management has proven to be a useful tool for todays knowledge worker and the project managers in the new economy which is characterized by more complex and uncertain project situations. This paper presents fundamental information about the agile methodology to encourage its implementation by professionals.

The Computing Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Supporting Hispanics at Critical Transition Points

Hispanics have the highest growth rates among all groups in the U.S., yet they remain considerably underrepresented in computing careers and in the numbers who obtain advanced degrees. Hispanics constituted about 7% of undergraduate computer science and computer engineering graduates and 1% of doctoral graduates in 2007--2008. The small number of Hispanic faculty, combined with the lack of Hispanic role models and mentors, perpetuates a troublesome cycle of underrepresentation in STEM fields. In 2004, seven Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) formed the Computing Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions (CAHSI) to consolidate their strengths, resources, and concerns with the aim of increasing the number of Hispanics who pursue and complete baccalaureate and advanced degrees in computing areas. To address barriers that hinder students from advancing, CAHSI defined a number of initiatives, based on programs that produced promising results at one or more institutions. These included the following: a CS-0 course that focuses on adoption of a three-unit pre-CS course that uses graphics and animation to engage and prepare students who have no prior experience in computing; a peer mentoring strategy that provides an active, collaborative learning experience for students while creating leadership roles for undergraduates; an undergraduate and graduate student research model that emphasizes the deliberate and intentional development of technical, team, and professional skills and knowledge required for research and cooperative work; and a mentoring framework for engaging undergraduates in experiences and activities that prepare them for graduate studies and onto the professoriate. CAHSI plays a critical role in evaluating, documenting, and disseminating effective practices that achieve its mission. This paper provides an overview of CAHSI initiatives and describes how each addresses causes of underrepresentation of Hispanics in computing. In addition, it describes the evaluation and assessment of the initiatives and presents the results that support CAHSI’s claim of their effectiveness.

A framework for query capabilities and interface design of mediators on the Gulf of Mexico data sources

The integration of various data sources collected from the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) will become a valuable resource for the public, local government officials, scientists, natural resource managers, and educators. Due to the exclusive and distributive nature of these data, a new framework is developed to retrieve partial results from the underlying data sources to answer more user queries for the union operator. In addition, the user interface of mediators is considered when computing the query capabilities.

Panel Session - The Computing Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Interventions to Increase Hispanic Participation in Computing

This panel presents the Computing Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions. The Alliance, developed by eight HSIs with funding from the NSFs Broadening Participation Program, seeks to increase the numbers of Hispanics in all areas of computing, including increasing the number of Hispanic students who enter the professoriate, retaining and advancing Hispanic faculty, and developing and sustaining competitive research and education programs at HSIs. The Alliance addresses issues of educational diversity by recruiting students into computer science, preparing students to succeed as computing majors, supporting students in their studies through peer-led team learning, helping students develop learning and career skills, and moving students from undergraduate programs into Ph.D. study. The objectives of and opportunities to work with the Alliance will be explored by five representatives of Alliance institutions

Engaging students with community organizations by using computer technology

The engagement of information technology or computer science students in community affairs is a challenge in all institutions of higher learning. This paper proposes a paradigm for civic engagement through community-based learning. With the pervasiveness of computers throughout society, there is a growing demand for diligent IT/CS education to satisfy the growing needs of a multiplicity of enterprises. This paper describes one approach to teaching computer technology that requires students to develop systems for various community, school, and university organizations. There is a wide range of opportunities for civic engagement through community-based computer technology education. The benefits derived by the students and the clients receiving their services are many. An application of IT/CS based civic engagement is presented in this paper.