The Tandy School of Computer Science has a Harmon Foundation gift to establish the Open Source Software Development Educational Initiative at TU. The funding supports a two-year project to enrich and transform the department’s curriculum with the implementation of open source software programs.
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Collaborative coding technology, massive-scale software project management practices and a fundamental shift in software culture have resulted in technological advances that benefit society and the economy. According to faculty in the Tandy School of Computer Science, the educational needs of open source software professionals are largely unmet by most undergraduate computer science programs.
“Major software groups like Mozilla produce and maintain open source software that consumers use and companies embed in their own software projects,” said John Hale, Tandy Professor of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. “It has become a major paradigm in the way large software projects are undertaken, yet most colleges don’t expose students to that way of doing things.”
The Harmon Foundation $120,000 gift will support development of a computer science special topics source, an Open Source Software Development Education Roadmap and strategic partnerships with student, professional and community organizations. The funding also will cover a graduate assistant and adjunct faculty member.