Open Source in COE — part 5, The big meeting
March 7th, 2005Well, it wasn’t that big… but sort of a climax.
The group:
- Dean Adams : Dean, College of Engineering
- Dr. Quinn: Active EECS Professor
- Jim Lundy: Involved with the space allocation process
- Scott Kveton: Word up OSL!
- Brandon Philips
- Mike Marineau
- Me
This was our chance to share our proposal regarding new space with in the College. Here we could gain our traction to start working towards open source in education.
Before the meeting even started, Dr. Quinn started talking about a recent curriculum meeting the EECS department had. Pretty much they are hiring as many tenure professors as possible, move towards more research, and have less emphasis on undergraduate studies. Sad. However, they are going to start relabeling classes to be more open source friendly. “Linux Systems Administration”. I guess this is a step, but not really too helpful. It is progress none the less.
We gave our pitch during the meeting and it went pretty well. I am pretty confident they are going to get us an adequately sized space for the LUG.
As for getting actual education around FOSS? Well, we need to get cracking on the platform for learning. This will ideally be our next move. Right now COE is in a flux with what to do with the CS dept. The EE guys have tekbots and everybody loves it. We need to match that with a platform for learning based around open source software.
The right people are listening, we have the support, we have the students, it is just going to take leadership to make it happen.
