After earning bachelor's and master's degrees from Northwest Missouri State University and a doctorate from Southern Illinois University-Carbonale, Tim DeClue joined SBU's faculty in 1985. This year, his senior students are completing a software design project to track church growth for a group based in India; it's the first time the university's computer science department has worked internationally.
Q: How does the senior project program work?
A: In their senior year, all of our computer science or computer information science majors ... seek out projects from industry or academia that would help them synthesize all of the fundamental concepts that we've been teaching them the last three years. So while completing their degree, they work on a commercial-quality, large-scale collaboratively built software project for a real sponsor. The actual focus of the class is to begin to transition our students from academic computer science to a professional software engineering career or graduate school.
Q: What companies has the school worked with in the past?
A: Locally, we've worked with Duck Creek Technologies, Jack Henry & Associates (and) Intuitive Medical, and regionally, we've done projects with Cerner Corp. in Kansas City, Shelter Insurance in Columbia, and Wal-Mart's information technology division in Fayetteville, Ark. For this year's project, our sponsor is the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, based in India.
Q: What challenges come with working internationally?
A: The challenges are mostly about culture. When you use a word in America, does it mean the same thing in India? ... Different cultures look at, say, work and standards and relationships between customers and clients differently. Another challenge is time zones - if you're trying to build a collaborative project with someone around the world, they're not going to be awake when you are.
Q: What factors inspired this international project?
A: In the current economy, software companies are developing software internationally because there may be expertise in particular areas of the world that we may not have or vice versa. You go where the expertise exists. It also helps students fulfill the mission of the university. We try to create servant leaders in a global sense, and here are students leading by taking on this challenge, and taking on servant leadership by building for someone else, for free. We're doing this at no cost to the sponsor.
Q: Do you see the school doing more international projects, and why?
A: I think we will. It helps support who we say we are. A lot of universities use that mantra of encouraging a global society, but when you look at specifically what they're doing, it's hard to see. This is one way we can support that mission. Also, this is the future of software engineering - you can't say you're preparing your students if you're not accepting that view that everything is being built globally.
This installment of Springfield Business Journal’s Architects & Engineers Project Report showcases 26 endeavors by area design and engineering professionals.
