Career-Starting Tips in Engineering and Computer Science (Podcast)

By Brandon Swenson February 19, 2020

At Grantham University, we believe in going the extra mile to help our graduates prepare for long-term career success. Our Career Services team met with Dr. Nancy Miller, dean and director of Grantham's College of Engineering and Computer Science, to talk about the changes her college is making to ensure the education provided is relevant day-one in today’s workforce.

One hundred years ago, people got around in Model Ts or street cars. Today, we’re ushering in an era of driverless cars. Back then, movies were silent. Today, we experience them in full color on hand-held devices using wireless headphones. Then, insulin and penicillin were new. Today, neuroscientists are developing prosthetics patients can control with their minds.

Forget 100 years ago, the pace of technology is such that our world is a different place than it was just 10 years ago. What will the next 10 years bring?

There’s a myth that says most of 2030’s jobs haven’t even been invented yet. Whether or not you believe it to be true, the fact remains, if you want to maintain relevancy in a tech career, you need the right education—one that provides the fundamentals and the thinking skills required to change with the times.

How is the College Helping Students Prepare for Long-term Tech-Career Success?

For one, Miller and her colleagues are taking a good long look at every program and every class. They are currently revising a number of existing courses and programs, as well as introducing several new ones.

“We have some new courses in the works,” says Miller. “We have a systems engineering course, a three-credit hour course, available to any student as an elective. And it’s systems engineering, a great topic area, and very relevant to a lot of work, especially if you do work for the military, working on large systems.”

A snapshot of the courses the college has been working on includes:

• Mobile application development for work on both android and IOS
• Programmable logic controllers
• Security of cyber-physical systems (i.e. how do you secure industrial control systems)
• Big Data
• New labs for security classes

“We just re-did our course on circuit analysis,” says Miller. “It includes the platform that has videos already in it. It has problems that you work—there are no assignments in the course. You have weekly quizzes instead.”

Practice assignments for the class come with a handy clickable icon that provides tips to help solve the problem. It will also provide the answer if the students are stuck, helping them learn where they went wrong and how to attack similar problems in the future.

In addition to individual courses, Miller is hard at work on overall degree programs. “We’re also trying to reduce some of our master’s courses to really focus on information management, what that means today in terms of data analytics and really focusing on what information is, as well as what data is and how do you create information from data.”

What about Offering Additional Career-Prep Certifications?

The College of Engineering and Computer Science offers two certification opportunities directly in two of its courses: computer networks and network security. Both courses have been aligned to the certification provided by CompTIA and TestOut.

“(CompTIA) is a very well-known certification group,” says Miller. “TestOut is less well known. Their tests are skills-based versus knowledge-based. As employers get familiar with it, it has the potential to be a more valuable certification, it shows you can do something, not just that you know something about something.”

These classes offer practice exams for both certifications. Within the platform used for these classes, students have an opportunity to take the Network Pro or Security Pro exams—they can earn the certifications in the lab. And, if they fail, they can pay $40 to take it a second time. Taking these classes through the College is a lot less expensive than paying $1,500 to $2,000 for a week-long exam prep and testing bootcamp. Plus, students earn college credit toward a degree.

Download Our Podcast

Now that you’ve gained some insight into what’s happening in Grantham’s College of Engineering and Computer Science, take time out of your day to get the full story. Listen in as Miller shares additional insights into how to make yourself as career-relevant to employers today and for the future in our podcast.