Spotlight on Student-Faculty Collaboration
One of the hallmarks of a Jesuit education is providing service to others. This service can take many forms and often leads to productive collaborations between students and faculty. When it was clear that a definitive list of classes in the core curriculum did not exist and was sorely needed, Mark Meyer, PhD, and two students, Ryan Winnicki ’17 and Angelo Licastro ’18, designed and built a system using the Computer Science Department’s Linux server, brahe.canisius.edu.
Within a few months, they put together a web application that consolidates the definitive core class list, along with notes, and uploaded documents that the Core Curriculum Committee needs to document its approval decisions. The site has already proved useful to faculty and administrators who want to see how many core classes are “on the books” along with the departments that offer them, the level of instruction, and which fields and/or attributes they satisfy.
All faculty can access the site, using the four-digit “secret” number. Once on the site, they can check on whether their class is in the system, what credit it carries and even when it was offered recently. There is no greater joy to a programmer than seeing other people actually use and rely on their programs, as well as no bigger headache than users who find bugs and call up to report them. However, if any Canisius faculty member does find a bug, please call Mark Meyer at Ext. 2432 or email meyer@canisius.edu. You can also get the secret number from him, in case you haven’t guessed it already.
Submitted by: Sara Morris, PhD, associate vice president, academic affairs
