FUTURE DIRECTIONS

• Continue to work on course binders to ensure consistency in all sections of a course.  This binder should consist of:
  • Syllabus
  • Assignments
  • Projects
  • Tests and copies of student sample tests
  • Lab based courses – labs and their objectives, as well as sample student labs.
  • Continue to create objectives in the labs, for all lab based courses, to enable students to gain the same learning experience, regardless of the instructor.
  • Continue to collaborate with other departments, as well as external business units.
  • To ensure quality, and consistency, faculty will be rotated through a variety of courses.  This will ensure innovative ideas are dispersed throughout the curriculum. This will also ensure all faculty members maintain a current skill set, diversity across our curriculum and will also ensure team building and orient all faculty to a single vision for the department.
  • Create programming contests for high school students.  This would generate interest in the program and identify potential students.  This could be used as a feeder for the program.
  • Create a summer technology camp for middle school students. (On the order of a Tech Prep for younger more impressionable students)
  • Curriculum Changes:
    •  All programs should share an integrated core curriculum for the first semester. (Example: CSC 101 Computer Science 1 and CIT 105 Data and Telecommunications, and CIT 103 Management Information Systems to give students a survey of Technology)
    • Explore the feasibility of combining CIT – Networking Security and Network Perimeter Security.
    • Combine CIT 105 Data Communications and EET 104 Telecommunications 1, into the same class.  Change name to Data and Telecommunications.  Upgrade to a 4 credit course and include some Digital Electronics.
    • Review all syllabi to ensure the proper integration into subsequent courses and the wider curriculum.
    • Consider meeting with students on an advisory level during the summer to ensure students entering the programs are enrolled in all pre-requisite courses required for the second semester, to enable them to graduate in a timely fashion.
    • Consider alternating courses to allow a student to complete the program during evening sessions.
    • Continue to expand the use of virtualization throughout the curriculum.
    • Create a group of modules that would cover a variety of emerging technologies.  This would ensure students are exposed to the most current technologies.  Many of these modules could be used in cross disciplinary ventures.
    • Create certificates that could build on degrees and/or core semester courses. Examples:
      • Information Systems (would include the business technology courses from CIT – Networking such as Management Information Systems, Systems Analysis, Systems Design, and Databases). It has been determined that one major complaint of business is a gap in the alignment between its business goals and IT goals.  This certificate would help solve this problem with both a hardware and software specialty).
      • Software Development -  (This could include Web based languages, Android)
      • Cyber Security (This would assist those students who are enrolled in the Criminal Justice Program.  Likewise, it would serve our students in Cyber to take a Criminal Justice Certificate)
• Electrical Technology continues to have a viable place in technology and there is a pressing need to revisit and reformulate the program.  This should be the program that clusters around emerging technologies. Examples would be: renewable energy, embedded systems, remote sensing, Bio-Medical equipment applications, and robotics and Telecommunication, which is the platform that all new technologies in the field are based on.
• Create a new course, Emerging Technologies. The department would then be able to offer new technologies to students without having to go through the long process of getting a course approved.