This collaborative EAGER activity addresses an important and long term problem in the nation?s cyber infrastructure (CI) ? the breadth and depth of network engineering talent engaged in research and education networking at the operational and engineering levels, and the associated education and training opportunities made possible through direct engagement by network operations experts. This activity focuses on undergraduate training for network engineering and operations, structured around a training and internship program centered at Indiana University, with a strong partnership established with the University of Montana. The primary element in the internship program is a Networking Fundamentals course over a 10-week period using inquiry-based learning techniques. The program also includes weekly seminars and working internships in operational environments at Indiana University leveraging their roles in campus, national and global network operations and monitoring. Student recruitment will emphasize EPSCoR jurisdictions. Student surveys will be used to evaluate the program?s effectiveness. The activities leverage an existing network engineering relationship between Indiana University and the University of Montana in which 2 students from Montana interned with Indiana?s GlobalNOC. The University of Montana will expand their student involvement under this funding and improve the course material. Intellectual merit is found in the effort?s exploration into the effectiveness of inquiry based learning approaches in the context of network engineering education at the undergraduate level. Broader impact relates directly to the potential for these activities to significantly increase education, workforce, and training opportunities in network research and engineering in real operational settings across EPSCoR jurisdictions.
This award funded Indiana University’s Summer of Networking (SoN). SoN is a ten-week program designed to engage interns in both a structured review of network technologies (topics change each week), and pair them with cyberinfrastructure practitioners (e.g., network engineers, cyber security officers, wireless engineers, etc.) to collaborate and contribute to a real-world network-related project. Indiana University operates the most advanced research networks, such as Internet2, as well as a software defined network lab and the Research and Education Information Sharing and Analysis Center (REN-ISAC). The SoN program provides an opportunity for students to see and touch the cyberinfrastructure that supports these IU activities. The goals of the program include: engage and excit students in the type of activities in STEM fields related to cyberinfrastructure provide a range of experiences representative of operating state-of-the-art network technologies at scale and in support of data intensive science strengthen collaborative skills through group projects. The students were engaged in a variety of projects ranging from improving a distributed file system used by researchers at IU to using OpenFlow to add new features to the campus network. They also were able to work side-by-side with IU’s network engineers as they operate the Internet2 network, developed new tools for the REN-ISAC, and became wireless network investigators by sleuthing through their dorm network. In addition to the lectures and collaborative projects, each student selected a research topic from which they would develop and present a poster during the last week of the program. Their poster session was attended by IU staff, as well as commercial sponsors of the SoN. Since the program has concluded, three of the students have sought and received professional positions at IU in the STEM field of networking. Another outcome of the program is SoN’s further development into a more formal for-credit class within IU’s School of Informatics and Computing (SoIC). This years SoN is a close collaboration between IU’s technology support organization and its SoIC.
