Computerworld -
As chair of the Appalachian State University computer science department, James T. Wilkes is helping prepare the next generation of IT professionals. But even though he holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Duke University, he's no ivory tower intellectual. Wilkes understands how computing can impact even earthy pursuits, including his other two professions: farming and beekeeping. Here he shares his insights on education and IT applications and discusses how these disciplines mix.
James T. Wilkes
Family: Married, with eight children ranging in age from 4 months to 21 years old.
Do you have a goal you'd still like to achieve? I have this crazy notion of creating one business per child. They're kind of on their way. They each have a little niche they're developing. I want them to be productive and support themselves and their families in a nontraditional way.
Is there something that not many people know about you? I love to surf.
You originally wanted to teach math. How did you get into computer science? I wanted to teach math, but I didn't like the teaching classes. And there was a speech class I had to take, and I hated speaking in front of people, so I changed my major. I took all the math and science and physics and computer science classes I could fit into my schedule. I came in when PCs were being born, and I was just intrigued by the computing and programming side. I enjoyed that puzzle-solving piece, and that allowed me to continue to do the math things that I enjoyed. I also recognized early on that there were more opportunities in computer science than in math in terms of both job opportunities and breaking new ground.
There are concerns that not enough U.S. students are studying computer science. Is that true, and if so, why? Part of [the problem of attracting students] is that students don't know what computer science is, so there's an awareness problem, and once you get into it, it's difficult. It takes a lot of time, effort and perseverance. You have to think creatively. All those things combined make it a challenging discipline.
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Computerworld - As chair of the Appalachian State University computer science department, James T. Wilkes is helping prepare the next generation of IT professionals. But even though he holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Duke University, he's no ivory tower intellectual. Wilkes understands how computing can impact even earthy pursuits, including his other two professions: farming and beekeeping. Here he shares his insights on education and IT applications and discusses how these disciplines mix.
James T. Wilkes
Family: Married, with eight children ranging in age from 4 months to 21 years old.
Do you have a goal you'd still like to achieve? I have this crazy notion of creating one business per child. They're kind of on their way. They each have a little niche they're developing. I want them to be productive and support themselves and their families in a nontraditional way.
Is there something that not many people know about you? I love to surf.
You originally wanted to teach math. How did you get into computer science? I wanted to teach math, but I didn't like the teaching classes. And there was a speech class I had to take, and I hated speaking in front of people, so I changed my major. I took all the math and science and physics and computer science classes I could fit into my schedule. I came in when PCs were being born, and I was just intrigued by the computing and programming side. I enjoyed that puzzle-solving piece, and that allowed me to continue to do the math things that I enjoyed. I also recognized early on that there were more opportunities in computer science than in math in terms of both job opportunities and breaking new ground.
There are concerns that not enough U.S. students are studying computer science. Is that true, and if so, why? Part of [the problem of attracting students] is that students don't know what computer science is, so there's an awareness problem, and once you get into it, it's difficult. It takes a lot of time, effort and perseverance. You have to think creatively. All those things combined make it a challenging discipline.
But I've really seen a transformation. In 2006, we bottomed out. There was a worldwide decline in computer science enrollment after the dot-com bust, and I think that was a perception problem. People thought the jobs all got offshored, but I've seen a a resurgence in not only jobs but also in enrollment. Our enrollment is up 20% this year over last year, and last year was up 20% over the year before.
Does that increasing enrollment match employer demand for people with IT degrees? All the projections are that demand [for IT professionals] is outstripping the number going in. I see that from the employers knocking on our doors. There's definitely more room for more people to get into it.
What's most challenging about teaching IT to today's students? [Helping them] apply what they're learning. I preach this constantly: We'll give you the coursework, the skills, the knowledge in this domain, but at the end of the day you have to be able to do something with your knowledge. You have to be able to talk about what you can do. We really push experience outside the classroom and provide opportunities to do that. Internships are pretty popular in computer science, and we have opportunities within the department where students can be involved in research with faculty or in a program where they form research clubs to work on some interesting problems.
Do you use computer technology to help you run your farm? I'm always thinking about how technology can help me. And the result has been one of my other endeavors: Hive Tracks beekeeping records management software. That was born out of being in my yard, doing what beekeepers do and thinking about what technology could do.
This is the technology you developed to research issues around beekeeping? I've got this Web application called Hive Tracks, which is a tool for beekeepers to keep records of what they do with their hives, a best practice of what they should be doing. A friend of mine and I developed that. We have over 6,000 registered users in 50-plus countries; most of our users are in the Southeast U.S. It's free for now, but we're working on how to monetize it. It came out of my need to want to walk up to my hive and have my device know what hive I'm at, what's been done there, what needs to be done.
And then another piece of that is having an instrumented hive, which actually feeds live data back to the application. The sensors there would [measure] weight, humidity, activity inside the hive. And this is creating a rich data set that I believe we can leverage to figure out some things going on with bees, what are the best practices for keeping bees alive, maximizing honey production, how to be more efficient. It will provide us with a way to learn more about bees and can reveal some interesting things about bees we might not have known before.
[With this,] I've able to marry the beekeeping to the academic world through a USDA grant, the Bee Informed Partnership. Appalachian's piece of that grant is the computing side, building the tools for gathering, entering, storing, analyzing, displaying the data. Data is sort of the new capital.
What can CIOs and other IT executives learn from your experience in that area? What I've learned is that it makes a lot of sense to marry something you're passionate about with technology. I tell that to my students. If you've got this underlying understanding of technology, you can marry it up to this area you're passionate about, and you'll be a much more effective contributor. If I'm a CIO and I'm looking to hire, talent and technical background is one piece, but someone who is passionate about what I'm doing is maybe more important, or at least as important.
-- Interview by Computerworld contributing writer Mary K. Pratt (marykpratt@verizon.net)
Read more about Management in Computerworld's Management Topic Center.
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