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 project was a two year prototype collaboration with Indiana University's Global Research Network Operation Center, in which IU-GRNOC offered a summer internship program focused on networking and the University of Montana helped setup the program and sent student interns from Montana. The project was a success, in that the internship program was held each of the two targeted summers, all slots were filled, and Montana sent students as intended (2 the first summer, 3 the second). Feedback from all participants, including the Montana students, indicated that this was a unique opportunity for them to get real world exposure to the realities of network operation in an internationally reknown NOC. In terms of internship logistics, the major outcomes were re-enforcement of two features known in advance: (a) the difficulty of creating and managing both the educational and project activities central to the internship for a large (about 20 overall) and diverse collection of students; and (b) the importance to students of making this a unique training experience AND a program fiscally competitive with other summer opportunities (e.g. summer programming jobs). Both of these aspects highlight the importance of gathering external support in a variety of foms from a variety of sources to sustain such a program. The forms range from financial contributions which increase stipends available to students, to providing practicing professionals to do guest lectures, to providing representative problems students can work on for their project component, to interacting with students following their internship to reinforce what they have learned and done. In Montana we have been able to begin attracting outside support of various types from the local telcommunications industry and other federal agencies with a major presence in this region. We are now working with the IU-GRNOC to find ways to continue and expand this as an on-ging summer program.
