Making Waves in Computer Science Education

Shippensburg University has no rivers, no lakes, and no watercraft as far as I could tell. It’s a landlocked University bordering farmland on all sides, with less than seven thousand students. This place, that we affectionately call Ship, is where I came from to be a software engineer for Ford Labs.

I graduated from Ship with a bachelor’s degree in software engineering, which was one of the three engineering degrees offered at Ship at the time. In fact, of all of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education schools, Ship is the only one to offer any engineering degrees. In 2012, software engineering was launched as its own degree instead of an offshoot of computer science, and in 2015 it became ABET accredited. That makes us one of only 28 ABET accredited software engineering programs in the country. Our program focuses on concepts that one would need to be a good engineer—things like code quality, design patterns, and agile methodologies—rather than the typical data structures and algorithms one usually covers in a computer science degree. There is a practice over theory focus that I feel really helps me shine in my work.

I could talk about my time in the Computer Science and Engineering department at Ship for hours. We worked with a lot of cool partners, worked on many interesting projects, and had fun along the way. I have a lot of pride for my alma mater, and because we have a fledgling engineering program, I think it’s important to give back any way I can. So when the alumni team reached out about doing a piece on me to highlight the program before the announcement of their School of Engineering, I was happy to oblige.

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