Monday, February 27, 2012

Software Discounts for Neumont Students

Neumont University has partnered with Xamarin to provide software development tools for developing mobile device applications. This software allows you to use C# instead of C++ or Objective C to develop applications for IOS or Android. It is far more intuitive and effective. Students may purchase a copy of this software for $79.00. The regular price is $999.00 so this is a significant savings. You can learn more about the software by going to the following website: http://xamarin.com/monotouch.

If you decide to purchase the software, simply use your Neumont email account and send your request to student@xamarin.com. Decide which version you want (Android or IOS). Note, the Android platform will run on either a Mac or PC but the IOS platform is only for the Mac.

Friday, February 24, 2012

Neumont Student IT Employment Opportunities

Neumont currently currently has a job opening for a Student IT Support Representative. We need someone to work 20 hours per week, and the schedule can be somewhat flexible, depending on the student’s school schedule. The pay for this position is $9/hour. Ideally, the candidate will start in the position at the conclusion of the current quarter.

The applicant must:
1. Have a 3.0 cGPA or higher and not currently on academic probation
2. Be able to assist students with basic problems such as wireless connectivity, e-mail troubleshooting, and software conflicts
3. Understand hardware troubleshooting
4. Understand and be able to troubleshoot Windows Active Directory, Windows Server, and Windows 7
5. Be highly organized, reliable, and have ability to multitask in an Information Technology environment
6. Open, update, and close help desk tickets in order to maintain service records
7. Be able to communicate effectively with support vendors by phone and email
8. Be able to maintain a high level of confidentiality and safeguard sensitive information
9. Work with Neumont IT staff to organize/inventory equipment
10. Assist with special projects as directed by IT staff
11. Be able to lift 30 lbs.

Desired qualifications (not required):
1. An understanding of benchmark testing
2. A basic knowledge of Symantec Ghost and the computer imaging process
3. Available to work during the breaks

If you are interested in applying for this position, please send an email with your resume attached to support@neumont.edu.

Friday, February 17, 2012

My Neumont Educational Decision, By Alumnus Paul Rohde

Many students are in the "Is Neumont Right for Me" phase of the college search process right now, and I thought this blog post from Neumont Alumnus Paul Rohde could be helpful. To read the entire piece, visit Paul Rohde's Blog.

Before I get really into this, keep in mind the program has changed a bit since I started, but I’ll try to annotate that as I go along, this particular topic comes from both questions I’ve been asked in the past and from some more recent questions from potential future Neumont students and parents.

My History

My interest in computer science really started before I was even in high school, both my parents were electronic engineers and met and graduated from the same college. One of the best things they ever did for me was to encourage me in my interests and help me as best they could. When I was about 11 or so my parents gave me a Lego Mindstorms robotics system. Its essentially a programmable brick with attachable motors and sensors that came with a rather basic programming system that gave me an introduction to programming. That became my programming staple for many years until I began to play with a language called DarkBasic. DarkBasic itself is a spin off language based off of the Basic programming language, its unique in that it is setup with a host of 2D and 3D direct commands built directly into the language to make it easy to play with. Instead of learning a complicated language like C or C++, it was more fun to tinker with and get immediate results (if any of you have tried to initialize directX directly in C# or C++ as a 14 year old, you know what I’m talking about). That grew into a several year obsession of building and making games, and learning a great deal about programming concepts via the age old ‘fall down and pick yourself up’

My first real classes in computer science began when I entered high school and began taking online classes in addition to my regular ones. My very first introduction one was taught in pascal, which was new to me but my prior experience allowed me to move quickly and fairly easily through. The second level class was taught in java and had a much bigger focus on Java and Object Oriented Programming but was not that difficult. After my sophomore year of high school I took my ACT test over the summer and got a good enough score on it to be able to enter a program through the state of Minnesota called PSEO(Post Secondary Education Option) which allows high scoring high school students to begin taking classes as a ‘pre-freshmen’ at the local college and have all your class expenses and books paid for by the state. More than that your classes could also count for both high school and College credit. So for the next two years I was taking a full college class load at Winona State University and graduated from high school with a home school diploma two years ago. My stint at WSU also landed me my first job as a student software developer in the WSU programming department where I was first introduced to ASP and C#. Over my time there I had completed two or three small projects that I look back at now and wonder how it took me a month to do, and in the educational meantime I had taken ~3 different programming classes to the 250-300 level by the time I left.

Neumont Decision Process

Pending my high school graduation I had a box of college promotional mail about a foot an a half deep where I continually tossed most of the college mail that I got. So how did I personally decide? I got lots of mail from Neumont, about 3-4 pieces before I even began seriously looking at them. Finally went and looked through their website, filled out a form and talked to one of the recruiters on the phone. That itself wasn’t what made my decision for me, it was when Neumont brought me and my parents down to visit the school that finally did it for me. At the time it was called Geek weekend, where they would bring in a bunch of new prospective students, give them a tour of the school, and give a chance for the student and parents to meet with people actually in the program, see the facility, and meet some of the faculty. After listening to the current students describe some of there current classes, the things they were currently being taught and getting a chance to see the current scope and size of the projects they worked on I was pretty much sold.

At that point my decision was between Neumont University and Winona State near where I lived, for me, I could have gotten enough scholarships to pay for most of my tuition there and since I was seriously considering staying with my parents for that time I would have graduated from there with little or no debt in under 4 years, plus I would have graduated with ~3 years of part time development experience from my job in the WSU tech department. On the other hand, Neumont was in Utah, farther away (With no-one I knew), more expensive, shorter, more intense, but I knew Neumont had MUCH more educational value than WSU after comparing the classes I would be taking at WSU vs the ones I would take at Neumont. I chose Neumont, for the following reasons: It’s a full bachelors in two years, it gets me out into the real world on my own, its a challenge, and if I’m careful I should be able to pay off my loans within ~3 years. As you can see, I decided to go with Neumont, and I’ve never doubted that it was the right decision.
My Neumont Experience

I began at Neumont in July of 2007, the summer quarter to be exact, in Cohort 15 (class #15 since the school started). After coming in, getting introduced and shown around, figuring out which apartment I was assigned to, meeting my roommates, moving in and finally figuring out what to do with myself in the interim weekend before school started my experience was pretty standard as far as standard college first days go. That first quarter for me was easy, I probably could have passed out of some of my introduction classes if I had chosen to, but I wanted the review and really wanted to get a good handle on the foundational concepts before I plunged in head first. That first quarter covered most (not all) but most of everything I knew conceptually prior to Neumont including html, css, javascript, basic C# etc… (I believe that the program now begins with java as the introduction language) plus a few general education classes. Even though it was fairly easy for me it moved fast, covering the fundamentals thoroughly from the ground up.

Quarter 2 began with a shift away from C# to Java, and also began to introduce the projects classes. A fundamental principle that Neumont has adopted is the concept of team based project classes, starting at your second quarter you have Development projects in the afternoon that are usually tied to an associated CS class, for me in quarter two our Development projects was tied to Java 1. After a quick review of the concepts we had learned in the C# introduction class we quickly progressed through a large number of topics in Java, introducing interface design, connecting to databases (MySQL for the java class), events, event handlers, MVC design and so on. The associated project class tied to Java 1 followed the java class closely where the class is broken in to teams of 4-5 for the duration of the class, each team is assigned the same project that they are required to design, build, test, and present over the duration of the quarter. During this time your first class in databases is taught in addition to a class knows as Information Modeling which teaches the basics of how to take business requirements, break them into there constituent elements and then to clarify, design, and build systems based on that.

Up through Quarter 6 everything is pretty standard, you will end up taking a variety of core classes including Databases 1 & 2, Information Modeling 1&2, Java 1 – Forms, Java 2 – Java web, Java 3 – Service Oriented Architecture, .NET 1 – Win Forms, .NET 2 – ASP.NET & web, .NET 3 – Windows Communication Foundation, Algorithms. For anyone starting now the last 4 Quarters are reserved for ‘concentrations’ which allow you to specialize you degree toward a particular field, Web technologies, Open Source, .NET, Java, Mobile Development, Mid range platform development… etc… Talk to Neumont if you want to know what the exact concentrations are.

The biggest and best draw to Neumont University however is the enterprise projects, your last several quarters you sign up for a class that’s similar to every other project class, except these projects are not run by teachers and instructors, but are run by actual companies with actual projects. Some are local and you’ll work at the company offices, and some are remote and you have a project room and conference calls on a regular basis. Its a sort of real life, pseudo internship with a company. Many MANY times these companies will hire students off of these projects but even if they don’t, by the time you graduate you will have a list of 2-3 companies that you have worked with on actual projects. You really learn what you want to do, what you don’t want to do and the direction you will want to take your career, more often than not it opens up a wide variety of options, especially if you impress your employer. To put it in perspective, I only really began my job search process at the beginning of this quarter, and as of this writing I’ve interviews with over 10 companies, received 3 VERY good offers, finally choosing to accept an offer with Interknowlogy, the company I’m currently doing my enterprise project with.

Neumont is fast paced, difficult, but well worth the struggle. Like any education you WILL get out of it what you put into it, there’s a lot to learn in this industry and it changes even faster. From what I’ve seen and can compare to both in the industry today and the educational world Neumont is already one of the top universities in the US for computer science and is rapidly gaining recognition.

A rather long winded explanation, but it gives a rough description of where I’ve come educationally over my life, hope it helps explain Neumont and myself a bit better.

Oh, and for anyone that’s still wondering how it’s possible to fit a ’4 year education’ into 2 years… try this:

5 Years at a normal college taking the normal 2 Semesters per year is 10 Semesters total.

At Neumont, you go year round and cram 4 in a year instead of 2. So 2 1/2 years at 4 quarters per year = 10 Quarters total.

Get it?

No summer break.

*Lights go on*

- Paul Rohde

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Community User Groups at Neumont University

HTML 5 and Flash User Group meeting on campus tonight, Room 305, 6:30 - 8:30 pm

Open to all students, faculty, and web developers in the community.

The HTML 5 User Group is an in-depth look at modern technologies that developers can use to create stunning visualizations of data. A look at the top companies and their implementation of these technologies. Real-world examples and tips to stay ahead of the competition.

For more community events on campus visit: Our Campus Events Page

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Career Week Events at Neumont University

As a reminder, Robert-Half will be presenting today at Noon in Room 200. They will be speaking to us on a number of different subjects including: resume and interview techniques, working with staffing companies, as well as open requisitions they are currently looking to fill.

Robert Half will provide lunch for the first 50 people in attendance, so come early.

Monday, February 13, 2012

Neumont Student Employment Opportunities

The Writing Center is looking for an academic coach to join our staff:

We are looking for an academic coach to work in the Writing Center with stellar writing and communication abilities. The position would entail working with students one-on-one to help improve writing at Neumont University. The position would entail helping with running the Writing Center day-to-day by: conducting writing conferences with individual students, keeping detailed records, and helping to create handouts for students. The coach would also assist in appointment-making and question-answering via the center's website and email. The position may possibly be an online one: the student could meet with students electronically using Google docs (a real-time editing and chatting tool). This coach would also be expected to help maintain and add to the center's website and spread its online marketing penetration.

Duties include:

• Have outstanding writing ability
• Have the ability to meticulously edit and proofread others' writing
• Provide strong writing samples
• Be willing to meticulously memorize APA and NU grammar rulesupon hire
• Be a role model and positive member of the Neumont community
• Be good at greeting and conversing with the center's customers and faculty
• Follow through on daily tasks provided
• *marketing skills, creativity and website maintenance skills are a plus.

To be eligible:
• Have strong grades, especially in ALL English courses
• Have taken Hum121 and earned a grade of A- or higher
• Have a cGPA of 3.0 or better

If you are interested in this position, print a student employment applicationand turn it in to Student Affairs no later than Friday, February 17th. If you have any questions, contact Alice Nguyen.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Neumont Student Reviews - Answers on Yahoo

Yesterday, a prospective female student asked a question on Yahoo Answers that could be useful to all potential Neubies:

How is Neumont University?
Hello, I'm a senior in High and been looking at Neumont for quite some time. I'd like anything form STUDENTS about their experiences there. Classes, (I'm planning into going to the Gaming Program there) how does the "after school with a career" thing work, and just anything else positive. I'm seriously considering this school, and I want to hear it from "the mouth of the beast" My main reason is I found this site with horrible reviews on Nuemont and liked to know if their true or not, I don't believe them to be true, so I'd like to know from the actual source.

Click here to read all the responses, but a few excerpts that might be particularly useful are below:

Maverik posted:

I'm a student in my 6th quarter. I know what site you are talking about...it's called CollegeTimes. The site has been deleting every positive comment we students place on the site...and has now disabled comments. If you read some of the comments they even show that there posts missing that had legitimate questions.

As for how good Neumont University is, they had a 100% placement rate last quarter. 100% of people got a job in THIS economy. The school has some positives and negatives, but most of us are going to college for that very reason - to get a job. As stated, they are only nationally accredited, but they are working on regional accreditation. This means it will be difficult to transfer the credits to another university. However, if you can handle the workload, the payout is definitely worth it.

The choice is ultimately yours however, but I just wanted to make sure you heard from an actual student.

Dakotah writes:
Hi! I'm an actual student from Neumont University in my 6th quarter (graduating next spring) and Neumont actually is an extremely great school. Unlike other colleges, Neumont mainly focus' on what the industry actually wants from a developer. If it's the website I'm thinking of, they've been after Neumont for a while. Those reviews are usually left by students who dropped out/couldn't handle the work load so they didn't get what they wanted. The website I believe has actually threatened to sue Neumont if the school tried to get the horrible reviews taken down.
As for the education itself, I have honestly never been so involved with school in my entire life, or actually have never been satisfied with the amount of things that I've learned, until I came to Neumont. I learn something new everyday, and I guarantee if I had gone to another college, I would've switched majors loooong ago. We have some of the greatest teachers, who have years and years of industry experience teaching us, which is extremely great because rather than have someone with a teaching degree, we have someone that can actually tell us useful information about the industry. We work with many languages and rather than dip our toes into each language we jump in head first into the language.
As for the "after school with a career" thing, it's completely true. Neumont sets up tens of companies to visit Neumont and recruit workers. There's a new company here almost every week, and mostly the companies are returning just because we have some of the most dedicated and knowledgeable people leaving the school every three months. Basically, if you don't leave Neumont with a job blame it on yourself, and not the University. If you really want more information you can check neumont.edu and visit the forums where you can talk to students of all degrees or message Karick Heaton who's email address is on the Neumont website. Hope this helps!

Null Pointer dishes it straight with:

I'll give you my honest opinion:

Neumont is an awesome school. I've learned so much in my 10 quarters in the program and I don't regret coming here. The teachers are extremely helpful for the most part and even if you can't get help from a teacher there are tons of students that would drop everything to help you out. (Especially since you're a girl ;) )

I can't speak for the game degree, but I HAVE taken two game development classes from the instructor and he is amazing (I hope you read this Jamie).

I CAN speak for the Computer Science Degree and I'll say that it's worth every penny. When you leave this place you'll be more experienced & qualified than anyone from anywhere else. Our senior instructors are top notch and they will open your mind to things that you wouldn't learn for years or even ever. (I'm talking about you Halladay) You don't get 100% job placement by being a diploma factory & having a mediocre program.

That said, Neumont isn't a cake walk. From the beginning you'll be in class for at least 6 hours a day, there will be some days where you have to pull an all nighter to finish all of your assignments, you may even have to skip a weekend because you have so much homework.

Neumont IS hard work, but as you continue through the program you get used to the workload and things become easier. Don't think that you'll drown under the workload. I've been in the hospital twice in Mountain Biking accidents while at Neumont and I've STILL managed to stay here.

It's all about your determination. If you WANT to stay here. Nothing will stop you. That's life.

Socially, Neumont is perfect for just about anyone. The students here are very accepting, there aren't any 'cliques' per se...we have groups of people that hang out regularly but any group is pretty easy to get into. (Once again, it'll be much easier for you since you're a chick)

If you're more of an extrovert, SLC is FULL of attractions, and activities that'll keep even the most adventurous person occupied. Neumont also sponsors outings to various places. Just a couple of weeks ago, we took a trip to the Brighton Ski resort for a full day of skiing with lessons and rentals.

With any school, you're going to have some negatives, and I'm not going to BS you into believing it's all sunshine and butterflies. There have been some not so good teachers that have taught here, but they were quickly removed within a couple of quarters. If you're an activist (someone who likes to change things) you'll probably get frustrated with how slowly things change (if ever). The policies are pretty set, and unless there's some outcry things will probably remain as is. The administration USED to be really involved in student life, to the point that it felt like we were being babied. However, they have backed off since then(so don't believe those reviews that say we have no freedom). That's really all I can think of. I've never really had a problem with anything here, these are just things I've heard from other people (but they complain about everything anyway lol).

So, with all that said, unless you're getting accepted to MIT or something, I would definitely recommend Neumont to you. This place isn't perfect, but no school is. Honestly, I'd bet you $100 that you'll find some of the same complaints no matter where you go. It's just the way college is I guess.

Anyway, I hope this was helpful to you. Good luck in your college search and I hope to see you around sometimes.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Neumont Student Employment Opportunities

The Student Affairs team is looking for the following student workers to join our staff:

RESIDENT ASSISTANT

Duties include:
Develop and nurture a Housing Community
Coordinating various social, educational and recreational activities
On-call responsibilities (this includes 24 hour access in emergency situations)
Address roommate issues, conflict resolution/mediation, etc.
Complete apartment check-in/out procedures
Furniture moving, apartment set-up as changes occur
Conduct health and safety inspections for each apartment
Support school programs and policies
Van driving duties
Assist with Orientation and other community events

STORE WORKER

Duties include:
Orientation preparation
Store transactions (meal cards, ID badges, etc.)
Assisting with student activities on and off campus
Van runs
Basic upkeep of classrooms and campus common areas
Customer service
Fielding questions from students and faculty

ACADEMIC COACH

Duties include:
Be a problem-solver in the classroom and assist students as needed
Meet with supervisors to discuss students' grades, and grade-related tasks.
Schedule and maintain regular office hours to meet with students.
Evaluate and grade examinations, assignments, and papers
Record grades with timely and effective feedback.
Attend lectures on a regular basis given by the instructor whom they are assisting.
Attend Orientation and other relevant campus events

If you are interested in either position, print a student employment application and turn it in to Student Affairs no later than Friday, February 10th. If you have any questions, contact Corrine Padilla.

Friday, February 3, 2012

Community User Groups at Neumont University

Did you know that Neumont University hosts a variety of user groups on campus? All groups are open to Neumont students, staff, and alumnus, and most are free of charge, or low cost to participate. For more information on user groups on campus, visit the Campus Events page.

Upcoming Events Include

ENROLLMENT EVENTS
January 30 – General Acceptance Deadline
April 15 – Financial Aid Submission Deadline
March 16 – 17 – FReX
April 13 – 14 – FreX

CAMPUS EVENTS
February 13 - 17 - Career Week
March 16 - Project Showcase
March 22 - Commencement
April 13 - TechTopia Challenge
June 15 - Coding Competition

COMMUNITY EVENTS
February 15 – My Tech High Project Showcase
March 9 – Code Camp Speaker’s Dinner
March 10 – Code Camp – Second Floor
March 23/24 – Utah Geek Fest - Neumont Campus
September 15 – Utah Geek events
First Wednesday of the Month: Utah Software Craftsman User Group
First Tuesday of the Month: Cocoa Heads Users Group
Fourth Wednesday of the Month: Utah Moble Users Group
Third Wednesday of the Month: HTML 5 Users Group
Second Thursday of the Month:.NET Users Group
Second Wednesday of the Month: Google Users Group
Fourth Tuesday of the Month: Ruby Users Group

Neumont Twitter Feed