My name is Frank Tsui and I'm
an associate professor in
the Department of Software Engineering,
And I specialize in software project management,
software metrics, quality, and testing.
In general, I also look at the whole software development process.
So we, in the department has about six professors,
including the department head.
And we kind of divide up our areas of expertise.
The key here is to cover
the whole spectrum of software from beginning to end,
including the supporting cycle.
So that's how we're set up and I
pick a portion that I specialize in.
They're tremendous amount of
two types of industry opportunities
for the undergraduate students.
There's co-oping, and internships.
The co-oping - a lot of
companies today are asking for a co-ops.
That is the one where people study one semester
and come back to school a semester and study this semester.
And the requirement is usually you
gotta have at least three more semesters so
that it makes it worthwhile for
the industry to hire our co-op students.
Internship allows students to go to work part of the time
and go to school part-time so
they don't leave school totally like a co-op.
We are working with Bridger McDonald all the time.
In matter of fact, we got
more co-op opportunities than we can handle right now.
So please announce this thing to the, to the students.
So that's a big area for us.
And we encourage that because
software engineering is a building organization.
So you don't want to just talk about
theories and textbook stuff.
You want people to actually
get their hands involved in this.
We also have a course called capstone,
and this course is offered in
the Computer Science Department
as well as Software Engineering as well as IT [Information Technology].
So in order for an undergraduate
to graduate, to finish up, they have to take a capstone course.
And the capstone course usually handles
a real life project suggested
by what we call Industry Advisory Board.
We include people from the outside,
people who are working in industry and
that cover the spectrum of software
from designing, testing, integration, coding.
All those experts are brought in and they
help us evaluate the capstone project,
help us evaluate the students
and give advice to students how to make a better project.
So we have many ways to get our students
involved with real life projects so that there'll be
better prepared to go on to the industry. So that's one.
The second is, in this thing we just talked
about a capstone course and our industry advisory board,
we also included another member
from this case from Georgia State,
who's the graduate school admissions advisor.
So that person could also tell
our undergraduates what type of things they
ought to be prepared to go on to graduate school.
Even though the number of
people who go to graduate school versus
the number that go to industry are quite different.
There's a lot more going in industry
and little lesser going into grad school.
We thought it'd be nice to have
our Industry Advisory Board covering both aspects of it.
So we do that.
So a student coming to Southern Poly can start at
undergraduate level and immediately
decide do they want to go to grad school or they
want to go to industry and we can start helping them,
and focus in the path they choose.
Or they can say,
Jeez, you know, how much do I really know at age 18?
I didn't know what I wanted to do with age 18.
So they can take a lot of different courses.
Between computer science and software engineering,
I should say among computer science,
software engineering, and IT, and kind of work in
general for about a year and a half and
then focus on which path they want to go on.
So there's a lot, a lot of
different opportunity that exists for students here.
A lot of people ask me, why Southern Poly?
We're one of the schools in Atlanta.
We have Georgia Tech, have Kennesaw,
Georgia State, all good schools. We have Emory.
Why would somebody pick Southern Polytechnic?
I came out of Georgia Tech, I got my PhD at
Georgia Tech, so I can at least compare the two schools.
And I can tell you that at Georgia Tech,
the concentration,
same field, concentration is
much more on the theoretical side.
At Southern Pol, we're much more applied.
We produce students who are
interested in going into industry
and who want to get their hands
dirty and produce things, develop things.
Okay, so that's what students who look to us,
if they're interested in technology,
they're interested in really working in
the technology area as opposed to deep research,
then you should come to Southern Poly.