Category: Featured

Advice: Why Am I in This Class?

“Why am I in this class?” is not something you want to be asking yourself halfway through a semester, yet this question still resonates from many corners of the student community. At this point, the best you can do is hunker down and suck it up– sorry, folks. But, when it comes to a new semester of courses (like now, with it being the first day of class), you can preemptively eliminate the possibility of arriving at that moment when you’re in a classroom thinking, “OH GOD WHY??”

The first tip we offer may be an obvious one: check RateMyProfessor! Everyone knows about this resource but some people still forget to use it or have not yet realized how useful it is. If you’re curious, check out the reviews of professors you’ve had before, you’ll quickly see that the reviews are often accurate. One downside is that professors are often required to teach core classes that no one enjoys, which gets them bad reviews. Posts by students list which class they took with the specific professor, so for the most accurate review, read posts by students taking the class(es) you’re looking at.

If RateMyProfessor still doesn’t convince you to take or avoid a class, ask your peers. They can usually offer more insight than anonymous reviews on the internet. Better yet, they can give you more information on what you’ll be learning. Great or shabby professors aside, sometimes the curriculum of certain courses is just not your cup of tea. Peers can help you distinguish between exciting and drab courses.

Next, if your peers and RateMyProfessor have both convinced you to take a course, but classes start, and you’re not feeling it right away…drop it! Believe it or not, all students have a two week grace period to drop classes without penalty. Sometimes the classroom atmosphere, the students, the professor–could be anything–make you feel so unenthused about a class and that feeling is obvious on day 1 of class. If this happens, log onto portal and leave! You can even pick up another course or take the same course in a later semester, maybe with a different professor and definitely with different classmates.

Now and then, classes trick us into loving them and stab us in the back later, which is rather unfortunate and unavoidable but also rare. Usually classes are doomed from the start if they are to be bad. This is easy to avoid if you do your research prior to taking a class. Doing this will help you find the classes that excite you. Don’t set yourself up for that mid-semester panic you’re bound to go through if you’re in classes that are wrong for you; going through these techniques will help you find the exact classes that excite you.

 

 

Welcome Back, Students!

Who’s ready for Spring 2014?! We here at Seidenberg hope you have all had the most enjoyable holiday break, but maybe by now you’re feeling the itch to get back into the swing of the semester and to get started on all those projects you have in mind, eh? We’d like to welcome all the beginning-of-the-semester initiatives anyone may have, and urge you to carry that gusto with you all the way through the spring until it feels so normal that you never lack in productivity again. That’s always the goal, ain’t it? Here are a few things to expect for the upcoming months that are specifically geared towards making this semester a successful one.

Make this your first goal of the semester if you’ve got nothing else.

First off, the wifi! Yes, Seidenberg HQ finally, finally, has the new PACE-WIRELESS wifi system, so good riddance to the dark, wifi-less corners at HQ that only SEEMED like great places to crack down on work. From now on those corners will support your endeavors with reliable wifi, as will the rest of our space here on William St.–hallelujah!

Next, a few shout outs to classes that will be available and a reminder that it’s not too late to register; Prof Linda Jo Calloway will be teaching a course that focuses on ways that new web media interact with content, which is critical to understand when designing for the web. The course is writing enhanced and still has spots available, so grab yours before it’s too late! Full course info is available via Schedule Explorer using CIT 335 and CRN# 21931 as references. Another class worth mentioning is Prof Dwyer’s interdisciplinary course on CIS and Surveillance in society. This class is the required CIS101 course paired with Film Studies, which work together for a unique approach to computing. The class has ONE more spot available, so don’t dilly-dally! (INT198h, CRN# 23188)

Lastly, we’d like to extend a warm welcome to all new grad students joining us for the first time this semester!

It’s been a quiet month of holidays, but we’re ready for the semester to start! We’ll be seeing you around shortly, and until then, keep checking in for other bits of news and stay safe in this snowy weather!

[Edit: previously mentioned deadline for DoD scholarships has been redacted due to changes in the scholarship availability. Those who currently receive aid from DoD will not be affected, but new applications are currently not accepted.]

The ‘Dark Horse’ of Seidenberg Initiatives

Of Seidenberg’s four initiatives, we often don’t get around to talking about  Distributed Teams, in comparison to how much we talk about the other three. So let’s talk about it.

Distributed Teams, also commonly referred to as ‘Virtual Teams’ or ‘Remote Teams,’ are groups of people who collaborate on one project together, except not all the team members are in one location. Now that the world is becoming more and more connected through the internet, but physically getting from place to place still takes time and money, people are continuously improving ways to work together from a multitude of locations. These locations can be as close as our two Pace campuses, or locations can be dispersed across the world (see: Design Factory).

This method of collaboration is still relatively new, and requires constant TLC, which Seidenberg has been researching and testing through various projects. Seidenberg chooses this field as one of our top four initiatives because it offers students, alumni, and faculty a global experience. Students, alumni, and faculty can all benefit from partnerships with universities around the world, as well as companies who choose to incorporate global perspectives when designing or distributing a product. Distributed Teams as a method of collaboration is rapidly gaining importance in the professional world, and we here at Seidenberg prefer to stay on top of the changes and innovations in the field.

 

Student Creates Mobile App at Developer’s Conference in South Korea

Every now and then, students from the Seidenberg get to head off on an adventure across the globe. Recently, we had an update about a team of students traveling to Finland (read about it here)– today’s post is about one student’s recent trip to South Korea. 

Alexander Gazarov (right), a graduate student studying computer science, is the latest of many Pace students to experience the international tech world. He has just returned from a developer’s conference in Seoul, South Korea, where he built an app with developers from all around the world. Gazarov found out about the conference – the Tizen Developer’s Summit – through another conference he attended here in the United States, the Samsung Developer’s Conference in San Francisco.

The app Gazarov worked on in Seoul is currently known as Benefit Society. It can be used to determine how much each person in a group should pay at a bar. For those of us who have experienced how difficult it can be to work out the tab during a night out, as well as the arguments that can come with it, the app does all the hard work for you and ensures the night remains fun and confusion-free. Its simple interface means even the hardest of partiers can benefit. Working alongside developers from Russia and South Korea, Gazarov used the language C++ to develop the Benefit Society app. At Seidenberg, we are extremely proud to have a student like Alexander Gazarov representing Pace internationally and creating apps that will help make life a little bit easier – at least at the bar.

Where in the World Is Seidenberg?

Within the past 2 months, Seidenberg has been all around the world. We’ve sent faculty members and even students to the far corners of the Earth to increase our global presence. So where have we been going and what are we doing there? And, more importantly, how can you get involved?Well, the first trip was exclusively for top members, meaning Jonathan Hill, the Associate Dean and Director of Special Programs and Projects here at Seidenberg. Dr. Hill attended conferences in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as well as in Singapore. These conferences focused on STEM – Science,  Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics – a topic that the Seidenberg school emphasizes in the classroom and study environments. Attending these conferences allowed Dr. Hill to experience what kinds of STEM initiatives are occurring around the globe in academia and commercially.

PDP students at the airport in October on their way to Finland.

Soon after Dr. Hill’s return from KL and Singapore, six students set off for Helsinki, Finland, as part of Seidenberg’s annual participation in Product Development Project (PDP). This is a project we  collaborate on with our good friends at Aalto University’s Design Factory. It’s an 8-month long project that allows students involved to travel to Finland twice: once during Fall to meet their Aalto team mates and to kickstart the project, and once again in May for the final presentations of said project. It’s a great way for students to gain real world experience in product development, which can often be programming heavy. This year, the six students from Pace have been put onto two different PDP teams. One team (Julie Gauthier, Olga Bogomolova, and Daniel Rings) has been joined with 11 other team mates in Finland and they will be working on a project funded by one of Finland’s largest casino companies to create new types of gambling machines that enhance the culture (of gambling and Finland) rather than detract from it. The other team (Shane Kirk, Nicole Semple, and Anya Rosentreter) has also joined with 11 others to design a test space for a children’s hospital that will be used in the plans for a new hospital to be built in 2016.

The day after the students returned, Jonathan Hill, Professor Richard Kline, and Wilfredo Peña, Seidenberg’s Community Manager, left for Shanghai. They visited the Aalto Tongji Design Factory, a portion of Aalto DF that has been around since 2010, for a “meeting [that] allowed for partners of the Global Design Factory Network to come together and share ideas about their respective Design Factories,” says Peña. Our Helsinki-based friends Peter Tapio and Andy Clutterbuck also joined up with Hill, Kline, and Peña to participate in the International Design Factory Week of 2013. This multifaceted partnership has grown strong enough that Pace University has now become one of only 6 international universities to be an official part of the Design Factory. This means big things for Seidenberg! More info, once the details are sorted, will be available in due time!

Participants in the Design Factory International Week 2013 at Alto-Tongji

 

Timothy Clancy at Pace to Talk About Cyber Security Policy

Earlier this afternoon, Timothy Clancy of Arch Street LLC gave a presentation on Cyber Security at Pace. Cyber Security is one of Seidenberg’s 4 academic initiatives and an incredibly fruitful field for academics and careers. 

Clancy spoke of Cyber Security in terms of 5 paradigms under the umbrella of Critical Infrastructure Protection. These paradigms include Law Enforcement, Military, Intelligence, Diplomacy, and Economics with economics being the focal point of Clancy’s presentation.

Clancy described Cyber Security as a socio-technical issue rather than just a technology issue. The faults can lie in many aspects of a program, and breeches in security are surrounded by ambiguity. Everyone wants to know: who is organizing the attack, what are they attacking, from where, how, and what are the consequences? And to answer those questions, Clancy prompts: ‘Who ya gonna call?’ The Ghostbusters won’t help in most cases, so who is available? DHS? DoD? CISCO? DOJ? Or are they (like CISCO, for example) the ones selling vulnerabilities in a box? These are the problems that engineers and policymakers are up to their necks in. In response to these issues, Clancy mentions Dan Geer’s statements (Dan Geer is a Computer Security and Risk Management specialist associated with MIT and CertCo) about problems engineers must tackle when programming, “Fast, Cheap, Reliable. Choose two,” and similarly for policymakers, “Freedom, Security, Convenience. Choose two.”

On a graph, the space between network complexity over time and security over time has grown exponentially since the mid 1980s. If this pattern continues (which has a high likelihood), Clancy states that Cyber Security will provide “jobs for life if [one is] willing to go into it,” and the most useful tools for tackling issues of governance, liability, and insurance against security attacks are research and education. Both research and education of Cyber Security are held at high importance here at Seidenberg.

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