"LAMP" Education

Hello fellow PHPers,

My name is Greg Spranger and I am the newly christened Assistant Professor of Information Science and Technology at Chadron State College (CSC) in Chadron, NE. I am writing you all today to share information concerning our new program/major at CSC – a comprehensive major in "Information Management Systems." It is a program designed to move away from the typical general ed. Computer Science degree, and give students a more focused degree on building business applications using tools such as Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl (i.e. LAMP engineers). Our goal is to provide career-oriented education, while still covering the theory and conceptual ideas that make Computer Science what it is. Basically, it’s the type of education I wish I received while working as a: (1) database programmer, (2) database administrator, (3) LAMP developer, etc.

Below is a sample listing of the courses offered:

Programming Concepts I (using Perl)
Programming Concepts II (using Perl)
Web Page Development (HTML, XHTML, CSS)
Human-Computer Interaction
Graphic Design I
Database Management
Web Server Administration (Linux, Apache, MySQL, etc.)
Web Programming (PHP,JavaScript)
Wireless Application Development (WML, voiceXML)
Dynamic Web Page Development (Web focus capstone course)

In class, we will focus on providing solutions, directly related, to the campus, community, region, and nation. For example, our "Dynamic Web Page Development" students are creating a "jobs" Web site for victims/survivors of hurricane Katrina (yatrina.elmo-ms.com) – obviously we have some work ahead of us:-)

Currently, we do not offer the major completely online, but hope soon to get there. If you may be interested, or know someone who might – please contact me at gspranger@csc.edu

Thank you, good luck, and please spread the word,

Greg Spranger