Class Summary, Oct 11

Today we had graduates come in and talk. The first two were Pauline Sung and Erin Salano. They're married, I think. Pauline is from Hong Kong. She started here as an international student, and she did a custom track that focused on both tech and design. She's currently working for Trofholz Technology, Inc., which does government contracts. Her capstone was a database-driven website for her sister's bridal gown business, back in Hong Kong. It sounds like an unusual capstone to me, but it's got all the elements of a professional website, so it worked. Her advice to us is to study hard and talk to our teachers, especially here, because teachers are so open. I think that's true everywhere. It was certainly true at my old college, College of the Redwoods.

Erin is a military guy, and he's got a military job. He's working at DLI, the Defense Language Institute. He's running a college inside a military base. It sounds like the students are getting a good education - they all get a 30gig iPod and headphones, and a Tablet PC. A lot of the material is in audio and/or video form, so the school gets a lot of use out of their investment in their students. They're also rolling out wireless this year, which is tricky inside a military base because the military doesn't like anything that's potentially insecure. He says the Computer Science textbooks are the same everywhere, and we need to push ourselves through the material. That's not true for me; Computer Science is what I love doing, so working hard at it comes naturally to me.

The third speaker was Caroline, and I never heard her last name. She majored in Instructional Design, Multimedia, and Web Design. Lots of majors. She got a job at the Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System, and I can tell she loves it. She's their webmaster - a title they didn't even have when she was first hired. She got hired part-time, and the more she worked, the more they wanted her to do other projects. Everything involved web design, but there are many different things you can do within that field, even for a single organization. She runs six websites now, including a portal for doctors, a portal for patients, and the general website for the organization. She says she learns something new every day in Photoshop or Dreamweaver, and she's worked with those programs just about constantly since she graduated.

Jennifer was the last graduate to talk today. She majored in Instructional Design. She liked CSUMB because there were a lot of real-world projects. Her capstone is a good example of this: she made a flash-based interactive map of a local park's trails. This is the kind of thing that elementary school students could use to explore the park before they take a field trip there. She says the key to capstones is having a group of people. I'm not sure if that means a group to work on the project, or a group of test subjects to help you refine your project. Either way, I can see the benefits.

We had a question-and-answer round, and the first question Dr. Tao asked everybody was what they were looking for when hiring people. Caroline said she was looking for people that overachieved instead of just doing the minimum. Erin said that troubleshooting is very important, as is showing your work to employers. (I could tell that he was good at troubleshooting, and that he knew computers well.) Pauline said people skills were the most important thing. Jennifer said that paying attention and following directions were vital, attitude is everything, and that you should let your talent shine on the job, as well as backing away sometimes and letting other people's talents shine too. Everybody is good at something different.

We also had one staff member talk. His name was John Ittelson. He seemed like a boring old guy at first, but he turned out to be pretty entertaining. He said he was dyslexic - he stays up at night and wonders if there's a dog. He got depressed awhile ago and threw himself behind a bus.

He studied at Chico, which is an infamous party school. He didn't party there though. Ten years after he graduated he went back and taught there. Chico was named a top party school again by Playboy Magazine. He brought a copy into class, held it up, and asked "Where are the parties?"

Somebody in the back row shouted, "Think about it John, you're not invited."

Thanks to that warm welcome, he came to CSUMB and started teaching here.