Chattanooga State’s Savitha Pinnepalli, Noman Saied, Jeffrey Schneider, Dwight Watt, and Patrick Ward, Computer Information Technologies Department (CIT) faculty members, were selected to participate in Summer Working Connections, a National Convergence Technology Center professional development event funded by a National Science Foundation Grant (NSF).

Working Connections makes the newest technologies and industry trends available to attendees while encouraging the kind of networking and collaboration among educational and business leaders that can strengthen any IT educational program.

The goal of Working Connections is to provide attendees with the expertise needed to teach their respective track in a subsequent semester. The week-long event began Monday, July 12 and participants chose one track for the duration of Working Connections. Ms. Pinnepalli and Mr. Saied chose “Nuts and bolts of creating a two-year Data Science degree,” while Mr. Schneider’s choice was “Learning Python with Cybersecurity examples.”

Working Connections notes that in the past six years, 75% of faculty who attended the event chose a discipline they were not currently teaching that ultimately led to 133 new degrees, certificates or courses that were created and later implemented using the training provided.

“I am grateful to our faculty who have taken a week of their summer schedule to learn industry endorsed new trends in the IT field,” shared Savitha Pinnepalli, CIT department head. “This will help the CIT department in developing future course offerings in the field of Data Science and Cyber Defense and Python Programming. NSF funding made it possible for participation in these tracks.”