Masters Courses

I attended graduate school at Towson University's Center for Applied Information Technology from Summer 2000 - Spring 2002. I received my Masters of Science in Applied Information Technology, with a concentration in Internet Application Development, in May 2001. I earned a 4.0/4.0 cumulative GPA during my studies.

The program was designed to educate graduate students in a variety of advanced IT topics such as Project Management, Database Design, and Web Development/Design, and Usability.

Below is a list of the courses I completed.

AIT 600- Information Technology Infrastructure (Summer 2000)
Description: A discussion of information systems architectures including software systems, hardware, operating systems, data bases, object-oriented technology, networking, and enterprise-wide systems. Discussion of emerging technologies.

* This class was taught by Dr. James Clements (Director of AIT), consultant, and author of Successful Project Management.

AIT 610 Systems Development Process (Summer 2000)
This class ended up being basically a project management class.
Description: The software development life cycle, requirements analysis, verification and validation, design issues, development tools and methods, modeling techniques, quality assurance, and implementation strategies, performance measurements and metrics.

*This class was taught by Matt Lang, a senior project manager at LCG technologies (a Baltimore IT Consulting agency). This was basically a project management class.

AIT 612 Information Systems Vulnerability and Risk Analysis
(Fall 2000)
Description: The identification of vulnerabilities and risks inherent in the operation of information systems will be explored. Countermeasures will be discussed and documented in an effort to counter identified vulnerabilities.

*This class was taught by Matt Herholtz and Amy White, both security analysts from the National Security Agency.

AIT 616 Fundamentals of Web Technologies & Development
(Fall 2000)
Description: Discuss fundamental web and networking technologies and protocols. Topics include the architectures and protocols of both local area (LAN) and wide area (WAN) networks. Example topics include the Ethernet local area network technology, Internet technologies/protocols (e.g., telnet, ftp, protocols), and the World Wide Web (http protocol).

*This class was taught by professor George Swartout of MITRE.

AIT 618 Client/Server-Side Programming on the Web (Spring 2001)
In this class I was required to develop several small Java programs.
Description: Discuss the issues and current technologies related to client-side and server-side processing on the WWW. Discussion topics include the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), dynamic HTML, client-side scripting languages (e.g., JavaScript), browser capabilities, WWW servers, CGI programming, Java servlets, and Java server pages (JSP).

*This class was taught by professor George Swartout of MITRE.

AIT 632 Database Management Systems (Spring 2001)
In this class I was required to perform various lab assignments using Sybase.
Description: Study of database management system fundamentals, data models, design, implementation and processing. Most popular database management systems such as Oracle, SQL server, and Sybase are used throughout the course to illustrate design and implementation of real world database applications and processing.

*This class was taught by Harry Shasho, a database developer at the National Security Agency.

AIT 630 Project Management (Summer 2001)
For my final assignment in this class I developed a 80 page project management report including RFP, proposal, scope, budget, and labor estimates, critical path analysis, etc. The management report can be seen in its entirety in the Research section of my web site.
Description: Tools and techniques for the successful management of information technology projects. Topics include project selection and approval, planning, estimation techniques, scheduling methods, budgeting, IT project organizations, and project control and assessment.

* This class was taught by Dr. James Clements (Director of AIT), consultant, and author of Successful Project Management.

AIT 732 Advanced Database Management Systems (Summer 2001)
In this class I was responsible for building a database using MS SQL Server 2000 that performed integrity checks, validation, and utilized built in triggers and stored procedures.
Description:This course emphasizes advanced topics in database management systems. Topics include: query processing, transaction processing, concurrency and recovery techniques, advanced database models, object-oriented databases, object-relational databases, Web databases, distributed databases, Data warehousing and OLAP.

*This class was taught by Harry Shasho, a database developer at the National Security Agency.

AIT 620 Business Data Communications (Fall 2001)
Description: This course is a general networking class focusing on Internet protocols and technologies.

*This class was taught by Dr. Y. Kim, a professor from Towson's Computer Science Department.

AIT 672 Web Usability(Spring 2002)
This class focused on usability analysis, testing, and optimization for the Web. Various usability testing and evaluation methods were studied and practiced. As part of this class' requirements I developed a usability document for the Census Bureau. The document proposed a set of usability testing goals for the Bureau's new Usability Knowledge-Base Intranet Site.

*This class was taught by Dr. Jonathan Lazar, author of User-Centered Web Development.

AIT 715 - Web Development Case Study (Spring 2002)
This class consisted of me designing, developing, and delivering a database driven Web site to Towson University's Department of Student Activities. Read the case study.