Most Dartmouth students will have to wait to enter their post-graduate lives before the skills they have learned in the classroom can be applied to the real world. But for four computer science majors, the chance to do just that came this past fall.
Alexander Ferguson '06, Naomi Forman '06, Erik Hinterbichler '06 and Benjamin Minkowsky '06 participated in the College's new computer science program and course, Engineering Projects In Community Service.
The goal of EPICS is for students to use knowledge they have been taught in class to solve problems for local organizations.The course serves as a culminating experience in the computer science department.
Professor Christopher Bailey-Kellogg explained the purpose of the program and how it differed from most courses.
"When I'm teaching classes I come up with a self-contained well-defined homework. The whole purpose of EPICS is that there is actually a real problem and the challenge of the students is to define the problem and work with the partner in a dialogue to create a solution."
The inaugural project this fall partnered the students with the Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich, Vt. Their task was to develop a more efficient way for the museum to survey its visitors.
Solving the task, the EPICS team developed dual software programs that museum staffers could use to easily create surveys, which could then be completed by museumgoers using handheld computers donated by Palm, Inc. The resulting data is then transferred to another computer for analysis.
The museum was pleased with the result according to the its director, David Goudy.
"This gives us a valuable time-saving tool to help us learn more about our audience," he said.
The students were able to participate in designing the course as well as the software. Before the project commenced the students met with various agencies and choose a project that best matched the needs of the organization with the skills of the students.
The students involved appreciated the uniqueness of the program.
"Overall, I liked it a lot; it gave us a chance to work on something that real people would be using instead of just doing regular school assignments for a professor," Hinterbichler said.
Bailey-Kellogg was first introduced to the EPICS program at Purdue University where it was initially developed. When he began teaching at Dartmouth, he realized the program would be a good fit here as well.
So far the program has been seen as a success, and this term EPICS will be partnering with Habitat for Humanity to develop custom software.
"It's good for students to see there are great applications for [computer science] outside of a typical setting and use these skills not just in big business, but everywhere," Bailey-Kellogg said.
