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CIT Faculty Receives Numerous Curriculum Awards

CIT Faculty Receives Numerous Curriculum Awards

September 7, 2017

Faculty in the Computer and Information Technology program have been awarded a number of competitive internal grants focused on making improvements to the undergraduate curriculum. These awards will allow faculty to incorporate bleeding edge technologies and global perspectives into a wide variety of courses.

"We want to ensure that CIT graduates use the most up-to-date IT tools and processes so that they can make a smooth transition into a successful IT career," noted Feng Li, Interim Chair of the Computer Information and Graphics Technology department.

CIT graduates are often sought after in the job market because their plan of study incorporates many opportunities for hands-on learning and real-world problem solving. CIT faculty build problem-based learning into courses at all levels so that students can immediately translate their classroom work into practical solutions.

Faculty members (L to R) Nick Novotny, Xiao Luo, Vicky Smith, Shamima Mithun, and Rob Elliott

"Experiential learning allows our students to make the connection between book knowledge and real world experiences required by businesses. Upon graduation, our students are ready for the workforce," said Connie Justice, Associate Clinical Professor of CIT and Director of Experiential Learning.

Congratulations to all of the award recipients. Information about the individual awards follows:

Xiao Luo, PhD, and Connie Justice, DSc received an inaugural SEIRI Seed Grant from the STEM Education Innovation & Research Institute. SEIRI grants support projects that are eligible for national funding that will further improve curriculum in STEM disciplines. The project by Drs. Luo and Justice, entitled Integrated Learning for Undergraduate Students in Computer Information Technology, "...include(s) understanding the cognitive process of undergraduate students in connecting and transferring knowledge from one setting to another, improving undergraduate students’ expertise in one subject by reinforcing the learning through cross-curricular projects, and assisting students to obtain the big picture of information technology through using innovative cross-curricular integration pedagogies."

Shamima Mithun, PhD, and Nancy Evans, PhD were awarded a Curriculum Enhancement Grant entitled Alignment of CIT Programming Curriculum to "...improve the instructional delivery, flow of content and assignments, and student learning for foundational programming courses in the CIT programming curriculum....The redesign in the three courses will use a backward approach of design meaning we will 'start with the end in mind.'"

Xiao Luo, PhD, and Rob Elliott, MS, received two grants from the Office of the VP of International Affairs and the IUPUI RISE program for the development of a new course entitled Global IT Citizenship. This course will allow students to collaborate with undergraduates from a peer institution in China and discover the pros and cons of IT projects with a global perspective. This course also includes a spring break study abroad component to China where students will have the opportunity to collaborate with their peers in person.

Connie Justice, DSc, Nick Novotny, MS, and Vicky Smith, MS, were awarded a CEG grant for a project entitled Network and Security Linux Objectives Curriculum Enhancement. This project will strengthen the alignment between courses in the Networking and Information Security concentrations and will ensure students are introduced to the most up-to-date systems used in industry today.

Purdue School of Engineering & Technology

CIT Faculty Receives Numerous Curriculum Awards