CSCE 488: Professional Development

Syllabus, Fall 2007


Instrutor:  Sharad Seth
    seth-at-cse.unl.edu
    472-5003
    Office: 359 Avery Hall,  Hours: 9:30-10:30 AM, MWF (You may try to catch me at other times, if this does not work for you)

Lab TA: Yuyan Xue,
    yxue-at-cse.unl.edu
    Office: Resource Center, Avery Hall, Hours: 1:00-3:00 pm Wed and Fri 
   
Pre- and Post-requisites: : JGEN 200; ELEC 362, 476 and CSCE 430; Must be taken exactly one semester before CSCE-489.
    Prerequisites by Topic:
Familiarity with: professional writing & speaking styles (in a general context), conventional word-processors, computer organization, logic design, and computer programming.
Exposure to: the concepts and principles of professional ethics and team dynamics.

Course Goals:

The 488-489 course sequence is unique among your undergraduate courses in aiming to prepare you for the professional life after graduation. For a successful engineering career, technical knowledge is certainly necessary but not sufficient. Proficiency in technical communication, ability to work in a team, and awareness of professional ethics are just as important. All of these elements are brought together in the 488-89 course sequence under the guise of a team project that you conceive, develop in sufficient detail to demonstrate its feasibility, and report on it both in writing and orally.

Specifically, the goals of 488 are to help you learn the following:

Required Text:
Inviting Disasters: Lessons from the Edge of Technology by James R. Chiles, Collins; Reprint edition (September 1, 2002), ISBN: 0066620821.  (Link to the book on Amazon.com and at the publisher's website)
Electronic Communication:
Class web page: http://cse.unl.edu/~seth/488/
Class email list: csce488
  
Your email address for the class list is derived from UNL Blackboard. You should have received an email from me before the beginning of the class. If you did not receive the email or will like us to use a different alias, send a message to the Lab TA, Yuyan Xue, asap. Instruction for online handin will be sent to you later.

Class Schedule:  
8:00-9:15 Tuesday. We will follow this schedule for about the first half of the course and thereafter meet at the scheduled time on as-needed basis. Always check the class web page for announcements before you come to the class.

Attendance Policy:
I expect you to attend classes regularly and participate in class discussion. If you must miss a class for some unavoidable reason, I would appreciate knowing ahead of time.

Grading:
There are no tests in this course. Your grade for the course will involve team work (80%) and individual work (20%). There will be four team assignments and two individual assignments, requiring activities typically engaged in by professional engineers: technical research,critical summary of  technical material, weighing in professional behavior according to ethical standards, and most importantly, work related to a project, including refining specifications to meet project requirements,  managing team work, and successful completion on schedule. The relative weights of the six assignments will be as follows:

1. (Individual) Written report on techncial research 10%
2. (Team) Reading comprehension, oral presentation, and leading technical discussion (based on the textbook) 15%
3. (Team) Oral critique of old project reports 10%
4. (Team) Written preproposal for the project 25%
5. (Individual) Classroom participation in discussion on professional ethics, etc. (Your attendance is a part of this) 10%
6. (Team) Oral presentation of the project preproposal and miniproject implementation 30%

Final grades will be assigned based on the following cutoff percentages:
A+ A A- B+ B B- C+ C C- D F
97 93 90 87 83 80 77 73 70 60 <60

Tentative Schedule: Refer to the class web page.

Last updated: August 22, 2007