Class Meeting:
Tuesdays and/or Thursdays, 9:35-10:50pm, 124 HRBB
Course homepage:
http://parasol.tamu.edu/bs/Courses/481
Instructor: Bjarne Stroustrup http://parasol.tamu.edu/~bs
Course Goals: The purpose of the course is to provide you with career planning resources and to expose you to a broad range of current topics in computer science and computer engineering that will be helpful to you in your careers.
Course Content and Schedule: This course consists of seminars which will be presented on Tuesdays and/or Thursdays during the semester. There will be a total of about 15 seminars during the semester. You are responsible for checking the seminar schedule on the course homepage and your email (announcements will be sent to the mailing list for the course) for up to date information. Be sure to check each monday and wednesday evening as sometimes seminars will be announced/cancelled at the last moment.
Generally, after the speaker(s) is finished, there will be a question and answer period where the audience can ask any questions they might have that were not answered during the seminar. This is often quite interesting and is considered part of the seminar. If the speaker is not finished, or if the question and answer period is ongoing, you are expected to stay until the end, or until 10:50am, whichever comes first. If you are in the seminar, you are expected to pay attention and refrain from activities such as doing other work, reading the newspaper, or sleeping. Behavior such as this gives speakers a bad impression of our program and students. Students noticed exhibiting such behavior will not receive credit for attending that seminar.
Mechanics and Grading: To receive credit for this course you must satisfy all of the following requirements:
Resources
| Date | Topic/Assignment | Speakers | What to turn in |
| Tue Aug 28 | Information Session and Preliminary Course Survey | Bjarne Stroustrup | Complete and turn in student information form |
| Thu Aug 30 | Overview of TAMU Career Center and Interesting Statistics regarding computer science & computer engineering majors | David McMahon, Texas A&M Career Center | Complete and turn in the seminar report (available and due in class) |
| Tue Sept 5 | Building your Resume From the Ground Up and How to ``Work'' a Career Fair | David McMahon, Texas A&M Career Center | Complete and turn in the seminar report (available and due in class) |
| Thu Sept 7 | Interviewing Skills | David McMahon, Texas A&M Career Center | Complete and turn in the seminar report (available and due in class) |
| Tue Sept 11 | Title: Software careers in Schlumberger Four software professionals (including 2 TAMU alums)from Schlumberger's Houston Technology Center will present their backgrounds, their past and current projects, and how a computer science education fits into a career in software development at Schlumberger. We'll briefly describe our company and software careers. We award prizes for good questions, too... | Julian Moreno Priya Kannan Emyliza Aninzo-Wong Keith Burkart Toni Smith all from Schlumberger (Houston) | Complete and turn in the seminar report (available and due in class) |
| Due: 5pm Mon Sept 17 | RESUME ASSIGNMENT: prepare an up to date version of your resume suitable for use at the SEC Engineering Career Fair, September 18-20, 2006. You are encouraged to have your resume reviewed at the Career Center or at the special "Resume Reviews for ENGR Majors" sessions organized for the Career Fair in the Zachry Lobby from 1:00pm-4:00pm on Sept 14 and 9:00am-12:00pm on Sept 15, 2006. | Turn in a hardcopy of your resume by the deadline in the instructor's mailbox on the 3rd floor of Bright or slip it under his office door (4517 HRBB). | |
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Sept 18-20 Report Due: beginning of class, Thu Sept 27 |
CAREER FAIR ASSIGNMENT: Attend the SEC Engineering Career Fair, Sept 18-20, 2006. (Class will not meet the week of Sept 16 to ensure you have time to attend the Career Fair.) | Submit a brief report in hardcopy at the beginning of class on Thu Sept 27 describing your experiences at the Career Fair. What booths did you visit? What do you think you did right? What do you think you could do better? Your report should be as long as needed to describe your experiences, but no longer than 2 pages single-spaced. | |
| Thu Sep 27 | Eclipse RCP (Rich Client Platform) | Dustin Lyday (J.P.Morgan) | Complete and turn in the seminar report (available and due in class) |
| Thu Oct 4 | Randy Trenary (VP of Software Development) |
??? ???
Note: Class cancelled. The R&R talk has been postponed. Now might be a goodtime to complete a "social assignment" or two. |
Complete and turn in the seminar report (available and due in class) |
| Tue Oct 9 | Improvised lecture | Bjarne Stroustrup TAMU CS. | Complete and turn in the seminar report (available and due in class) |
| Thu Oct 18 |
Technology Trends:
Extraordinary developments in sensor network technologies, software design, artificial intelligence, network security, and the management of distributed organizations are emerging from almost every academic department, laborartory andresearch center around theworld. Influential community leaders are compelled to address the growing pipeline need for information and technology expertise within the academic community that creates and supports the foundation of the knowledge economy.
According to the US department of labor statistics (BLS), the position of software engineer (science, application, information and system software) position ranked #1. According to the survey data, software engineers are needed in every sector of the economy, making this one of the fastest-growing jobs in the US. I will present the myth busters associated with the career trends in technology as well as describe the roles of some of the highest in demand opportunities in industry. I will also cover what opportunities there are at Microsoft. |
Bradley K. Jensen, Ph.D --- Microsoft Academic Relationship Manager | Complete and turn in the seminar report (available and due in class) |
| ??? |
Making cool planes
Cancelled or postponed --- Cancelled or postponed --- Cancelled or postponed --- Cancelled or postponed --- Cancelled or postponed --- Cancelled or postponed --- Cancelled or postponed --- Cancelled or postponed --- Cancelled or postponed --- |
??? - Lockheed-Martin Aero (Ft. Worth) | Complete and turn in the seminar report (available and due in class) |
| Tue Oct 30 | Salary Negotiation | Dr. Wayne Terrell, Texas A&M Career Center | Complete and turn in the seminar report (available and due in class) |
| Thu Nov 1 | Computing Frontiers in Today's Oil Industry. Offshoring - multi-core processing - the state of the energy business - scientific software - physical models - worldwide opportunities - exploration and production - agile software development - sustainable software process. | Bill Menger, Director of Software and High Performance Computing Subsurface technology. ConocoPhillips Company. | Complete and turn in the seminar report (available and due in class) |
| Thu Nov 8 | Randy Trenary (VP of Software Development) Reynolds and Reynolds | Detailed abstract later:The major topic is likely to be business use of .Net. | Complete and turn in the seminar report (available and due in class) |
| Thursday Nov 15 | The Application Process for Gradaute School Admission & Fellowships | Nancy Amato TAMU CS. | Complete and turn in the seminar report (available and due in class) |
| Tue Nov 20 | Sofware on Demand - a new model for organizing software development. This model is an attmpt to address issues of price, quality, and risks inherent in large-scale software development and an alternative to conventional outsourcing. | Ross Graeber, Valtech consultant. | Complete and turn in the seminar report (available and due in class) |
| Tue Nov 27 | AIX Virtualization: Providing an abstracted view of physical resources into logical resources independently of their geographical location. | Rafa Nogueras Advisory Software Engineer, IBM | Complete and turn in the seminar report (available and due in class) |