From: Phil deHaan (dehp@calvin.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 19 2002 - 12:37:31 EST
November 21, 2002 == FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Calvin Externship Program puts professors into the for-profit business
world for a semester, giving them a chance to see first-hand how their
discipline connects to business.
For many professors the experience is an eye-opening one. And it often results
in a direct benefit to Calvin students.
This semester, for example, two computer science professors at Calvin are on
externships with local businesses. Earl Fife is working with CPR, a West
Michigan technology services provider whose many products include information
system security, while Keith Vander Linden is working with Siemens Dematic (the
company created when Siemans Production and Logistics combined with Rapistan
Systems) on user interfaces for material handling products.
Both professors say the experience has been challenging and yet energizing too.
And both plan to take lessons they've learned to the Calvin classroom when they
return to teaching. In fact Fife will offer a course already in the spring 2003
semester on computer security, while VanderLinden has a course planned for
Interim 2004 on user interfaces.
Fife is a mathematician who has a life-long interest in cryptography, the art
of taking a message and scrambling it so that only someone with special
knowledge can read the message. For many years cryptography was considered
mostly a pure mathematical application. That changed, says Fife, as the digital
age became more and more pervasive.
"Cryptography now," he says, "is the basis for the very necessary privacy we
need in a digital age. It's used to encrypt traffic between computers and
servers so that even if someone intercepts the flow they won't be able to
interpret it."
For Fife the connection between cryptography and computer privacy cemented a
burgeoning interest in computers (he is co-founder of the Mathematics Archives).
And he soon branched out from computer privacy to computer security, looking
not only at how to keep traffic flow private but going back a step to how to
keep someone from intercepting it in the first place.
That emphasis led to a sabbatical at Purdue University in computer security and
now to the externship at CPR, where he is working on an intrusion detection
system. It's a device, a stand-alone computer (perhaps even a desktop
computer), that combines both hardware and software into a package that will
allow companies to keep their networks secure. Basically it monitors traffic on
a company network and sends an alert to the system administrator when something
anomalous appears.
Fife says the difference between a firewall, a more traditional method of
keeping intruders out of a company network, and an intrusion detection device is
like the difference in a school between a simple locked door and a locked door
with a hallway monitor outside the door. The firewall attempts to keep people
out but often can easily be circumvented. The intrusion detection device can
watch the network and look for what might be attempts to get into the network
prior to alerting someone who can take action.
One critical component in an intrusion detection device is the systems
administrator who receives the alerts. That person needs to be able to
interpret the information she receives. That's why Fife plans to offer this
spring already a class at Calvin that will help students understand computer
security and among other things help them read network traffic to look for
problems.
VanderLinden also will be adding a course to the Calvin computer science major
based on his externship at Siemans. He has been working on user interfaces and
is convinced that area of computer programming is among the hottest things in
industry right now. And so he plans to add a course at Calvin that will see
computer science students design a user interface system. And not just design
it, but also watch users try to use the interface. Then they'll be asked to
modify the design based on user feedback, a real-world experience says
VanderLinden that will give students a sense of how programming impacts a person
doing a job.
Siemans sells a variety of products that are used for everything from shipping
and receiving to product to sorting and picking. It's all dependent on
computers to make it work well and efficiently. And where there's a computer
there's a place where the user, say a warehouse manager, and the computerized
system communicate with each other. That place is the user interface. And how
well it works, or doesn't work, can determine whether a million dollar system is
purchased, or not purchased. In addition tiny efficiency gains in an interface
can save a company a lot of money.
"Since coming here," says VanderLinden, "I've come to realize the importance of
the user interface in what Siemens does. How the user of a Siemens' product
interacts with the product is a big thing. The product is significant but the
interface is too."
The Calvin Externship Program, say both VanderLinden and Fife, is a must for
computer science professors who deal with a field that not only changes
continually, but also is intimately connected to so much of the business world.
VanderLinden appreciates that the program does not cost Siemans a cent. His
salary continues to be paid while he's on the externship. And an externship
endowment fund pays for the cost of his replacement teacher at Calvin.
"It," he says, "is an amazing program. Every Calvin faculty member should look
into it."
-end-
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Wed Nov 20 2002 - 23:59:05 EST