Xref: utzoo misc.jobs.contract:323 comp.edu:3390 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!unmvax!nmt.edu!john From: john@nmt.edu (John Shipman) Newsgroups: misc.jobs.contract,comp.edu Subject: Practicum courses Message-ID: <1990Jul22.235418.7226@nmt.edu> Date: 22 Jul 90 23:54:18 GMT References: <43046@appl <3101@tellab5.tellabs.com> Organization: Zoological Data Processing Lines: 23 Mike Segel (segel@tellabs.com) writes (in misc.jobs.contract): +-- | At times I argued with some profs that they needed to teach | C. Why? Because almost all of the industry was using it, and | most of our upper level classes required it. His response was | that "we are not a trade school" and that you can learn it on | your own. +-- At New Mexico Tech, the CS department offers several ``practicum'' courses for specific skills. Most are one-hour, lab-type courses. I have taught practica in C, Unix, and TeX. Granted, these are not theory courses, but I believe that a blend of theory and practice is going to do more good for our industry-bound grads than pure theory. They are not required, so students on academic tracks can ignore them. Service courses like these also help to improve our department's relations with the rest of the school. -- John Shipman/Computer Science Department/New Mexico Tech/Socorro, NM 87801 (505)835-5301; john@jupiter.nmt.edu