Dear Vanderbilt alums,<\/p>\n
You may remember our course on Introduction to Database \u2014 CS 265 (https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/cs265\/<\/a>). I\u2019ve been teaching the course for 20 years, and there are over 500 \u201calums\u201d of the course under my instruction. This year I am contacting as many alums as I can find (even beyond CS 265), and inviting you to reconnect with Vanderbilt in a new way. I’m also highlighting this possibility for Vanderbilt staff, other students, and friends — a database course for One Vanderbilt<\/a>.<\/p>\n This year CS 265 students are working through Jennifer Widom\u2019s Self-Paced Online Stanford Course in Database (https:\/\/class.stanford.edu\/courses\/DB\/2014\/SelfPaced\/about<\/a>) as a part of their CS 265 requirement. This course is open to anyone, is completely free, completely self-paced, is no pressure, and if you wanted to freshen up on database, it would be a good place to do it. It is also high quality material. You could learn database for the first time if you weren\u2019t in CS 265.<\/p>\n In addition to or instead of signing up for the self-paced course, I\u2019ve created LinkedIn and Facebook groups, and a Google+ community, each called \u201cIntroduction to Database Learning Community\u201d \u2014 you can join by request. I hope that these are places for our students and alums, instructors, students, and other learners and mentors to talk about and network on database and computing. Here is a snippet of what I tell students about these communities on the CS 265 course site (https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/cs265\/learning-communities\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n \u201cI’ve heard it said that Vanderbilt students don\u2019t adequately take advantage of Vanderbilt alums as part of their early professional social networks, so we will see if creating a community of alums and students helps change any of that. In addition, when you leave Vanderbilt, we want you to have lifelong learning opportunities with Vanderbilt. This is part of the motivation too \u2014 inviting alums back to learn with us, perhaps to freshen up their skills, even as they mentor us with years of experience following CS 265, in industry or otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n Creating and maintaining lifelong learning opportunities for our students and softening the boundary between student and alum is an important motivation too.<\/p>\n In any case, whether you join or not, I hope that you\u2019ll look me up \u2014 either when you are in Nashville (I\u2019ll show you Warren College<\/a>), or virtually, if you don\u2019t make it back often.<\/p>\n Best,<\/p>\n Doug<\/p>\n Douglas H. Fisher Dear Vanderbilt alums, You may remember our course on Introduction to Database \u2014 CS 265 (https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/cs265\/). I\u2019ve been teaching the course for 20 years, and there are over 500 \u201calums\u201d of the course under my instruction. This year I am … Continue reading
\nFaculty Director of Warren College
\nAssociate Professor of Computer Science and of Computer Engineering
\nVanderbilt University<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"