CPATH CB: Developing a Professional Community for Introducing the Principles of Enterprise Computing Technologies into the Undergraduate Curriculum

This CPATH Community Building project develops a computing education community focused on introducing enterprise computing technologies into undergraduate computing education. Marist College serves as the lead institution in partnership with Illinois State University, North Carolina Central University, University of Arkansas, and Widener University. The team plans to bring together representatives from academia, industry, and non-profit sectors to develop and implement new curricula focused on skills needed to develop and maintain enterprise systems, integrate them into networks of technologically and geographically diverse systems, and design and implement applications that span a network of enterprise systems and distributed systems working together. Students should have the skills to set up and run data centers that minimize energy requirements and meet the ever increasing need for business continuity and disaster recovery. The project includes participation by a wide range of experts to develop cost effective undergraduate curricula based on nonproprietary standards that address essential computing technology principles encountered in predominantly large system environments.

The intellectual merit of the project lies in strong collaborative team and committed industry partners. The enterprise computing focus is innovative and important for the nation but also challenging both academically and practically. The project has the potential to produce new research and models in an area of emerging importance to the country.

The broader impacts of the project include the development of an educational community to share resources such as new courses and curricula. The implementation of new enterprise computing curricula could impact job prospects and capacity for students across the country through new innovative computing pathways open to a diverse student population in a range of academic disciplines.