From the Chair
Dr. Gary Buterbaugh
This article will be divided into several sub-articles. We'll try
the "Top-Down Approach"!
Homecoming Alumni Get Together - RT Works, Chat Doesn't!
We had a great time with the twenty or so alumni who show up for
our breakfast on Homecoming morning (see Carol's article). We had
a good mix of alumni and great food. This was such a success that
we think we will make it an annual event! Unfortunately our
experiment with using Chat Rooms didn't work so well. Although I
understand that some of the people who were here went down to chat,
we had no one who was off-campus log-in (my information about "no-one" could be wrong). It's interesting to me that our alumni would
rather be real time (did you know that was what RT stood for) than
chatting in a Chat Room. Maybe you all are not a bunch of nerds
after all!!
Difficult Semester
This semester has been one in which "if anything can go wrong it
will" and it did! First of all, in June our College Technical
person took another job here at IUP. He was the one who repaired
equipment that was not working (like my printer that right now is
not even plugged in and my remote mouse that needs to be cleaned).
Then our Lab Manager, Nadine Tatarko, left for a job in Johnstown.
Both these positions have yet to be filled!
On top of that, renovations in Stright were originally to have
closed Tompkins lab for the summer and given us another classroom
to us, but delays in that project meant that we had to close the
lab for the Fall. We were given every assurance that software used
by students only available in that Lab would be made available
elsewhere. Guess what? That did not happen!
Some almost good news was that in late August (remember when
school starts and that faculty should have some time to try out new
software and prepare lectures, etc.), the State System of Higher
Education signed an agreement with Microsoft for a series of
software. This meant that finally we would have more than a
handful of copies of C++ available (as we had had in the Spring)
and that we would have both Java++ and Front Page, which we needed
for several courses, available. However, this new software
(actually the Visual Studio suite) needed to be installed and
requires a huge amount of hard disk space, more than was available
on all the machines in our teaching classroom, most of the faculty
machines, and many of the machines in the Lab. (We sort of solved
that problem by having our acting Lab Manager, a student, move the
Tompkins lab machines to the teaching classroom (Stright 220),
which we now use as a teaching classroom in the day and as an
ersatz Tompkins lab at night - fun!). The delay in the renovation
also meant that the additional classroom we had been promised was
not available; and so we had to move all the classes scheduled for
the new classroom to Stright 220 and have faculty and their classes
switch rooms when others need to use the teaching classroom. I do
not think I need to go on!!!
Major Donation from PPG Industries, Inc.
Jeff Scott (May 1990) visited the Department and presented us
with a check for $5,000. This will be split between student
activities, scholarships, and hardware and software. PPG has been
very good to our department. In the past twenty years, they have
probably given us over $100,000 and have provided opportunities for
internships, for Dr. Shubra to teach for them in the summer, and
for me to go to China. They have hired any number of our
graduates; and the graduates have done well with PPG.
We so much appreciate this good relationship that we have with
PPG and value the money because it enables us to do things that we
could not otherwise do. Thanks PPG!
Two New Faculty Join the Department
We were finally able to fill the vacancies caused by the
retirements of Professors John Sweeney and Kathy McKelvey. We are
pleased to welcome to the department Dr. Andrew Yang and Dr. Sanwar
Ali.
Dr. Yang is originally from Taiwan where he received his
Bachelor's degree. He then came to study in the USA at the
University of Minnesota where he got a Master's degree and his PhD.
He then taught for seven years at the University of Southern
Connecticut. His wife Lisa and he have two children Andrew (8) and
Jennifer (4). [Ed. Note: see Dr. Yang's self-introduction in this
issue of The Debugger]
Dr. Ali is originally from Bangladesh where he received his
Bachelor's degree. He then came to study in the USA at Marquette
University in Milwaukee where he got a Master's degree and at Texas
Christian University where he got his PhD. He also studied at the
University of North Texas and University of Texas at Arlington. He
has taught for total of eight years, most recently at MacMurray
College in Illinois. His wife Parveen and he have two children
Nawshin (18), a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania and
Shihab (10). [Ed Note: expect Dr. Ali's self-introduction in the
next issue.]
THANK YOU!!
To all alumni and friends
who contribute to the
Computer Science Department
through the Foundation for IUP