Computer Science

Service

• Manila, Philippines (January 2006)
• Papua New Guinea (January 2001)

Manila, Philippines (January 2006)

During January 2006 members of the computer science department traveled to Manila, Philippines to participate in a class entitled “Seminar in International Development”. The underling purpose of this course is to provide an opportunity for students to productively engage their discipline in an international setting. The group included seven MVNU students and three alumni, Tim Myatt (’81 and MVNU director of network computing), Ty Offineer (’90), and John Dubusky (’02), and was led by Dr. James Skon, Professor of Computer Science.

While in Manila, the team participated in three main projects. The first was to build a complete gigabit optical network backbone for the Asia Pacific Nazarene Seminary (APNTS). APNTS is a graduate theological school, preparing men and women for service in ministry. Because APNTS charges very little tuition in order to provide an affordable education for students, very little funding has been available for computer networking needs.

When Dr. Kasper and Dr. Skon visited Manila in the summer of 2005 to assess possible projects, they found that the existing network was built out of aging low-end home networking equipment, with indoor type network cables running in broken conduits between the many campus buildings. Stories abounded of almost daily network outages, blown equipment from lightning strikes, and infected computers. The school needed a fast, reliable, network, with an enterprise class firewall, file server, and core router.

During the fall, the computer science department received donations of a firewall and RAID server being retired from service at MVNU. In addition, Gordon College donated a 64 port gigabit core router and 6 24 port managed network switches.

While there in January, Tim Myatt led a team of students and alumni in the task of building a new backbone based on the equipment the team brought. This included rebuilding the campus server room from the ground up. The new network was interconnected with a newly installed fiber optic backbone, providing reliable gigabit speed connections among all major buildings. The network included the firewall for security, and a VLAN segmented organization for manageability. Tim, as project leader, focused on truly combining learning with service. T.J. Seabrooks, a senior CS major said “the students weren’t just there to be helpers but were learning something and truly doing the work. Tim was the helper, we did all the work.”

While this work proceeded at APNTS, Dr. Skon worked with another team at the Nazarene Asia Pacific Regional Office. Here they worked with MVNU Alumnus Kevin Brunk (’88), currently the business manager for the regional office in Manila, to set up a new VPN to allow for remote computer access and a voice over IP system to allow the use of the internet for phone calls across the region and with the US.

Three three female students spend some amazing time working with children at the New Faith Family Children’s Home in Manila. The orphanage, which houses 25 children, was started only a year ago by Jeff Long, a administrator at Faith Academy (a Manila school for missionary children). Jeff said that the idea for starting an orphanage came when his middle school daughter asked him why they couldn’t do more to help the over 200,000 homeless street children living, on their own, in Manila. The orphanage takes the children, ranging in age from new born (abandoned at birth) to 13 years old. They nurse them back to heath (more are malnourished), get their there teeth fixed, and enroll them in a Christian school. “The highlight of the trip for me working with the Filipino kids, both at the orphanage and the street kids. At first it was so overwhelming to be with so many kids who came from such horrible backgrounds but it turned out to be such a blessing. They showed such happiness and joy for life even though they didn't have anything. They had some amazing testimonies and it really allowed me to reflect back on my own faith and learn from kids who were half my age” says Katie Vipperman, an exercise studies junior.

In addition to these major projects, the team had many other ministry opportunities, as well as a chance to interact with Filipinos, in churches, at the seminary, and on the streets. They also toured Manila, and visiting two other nearby islands. Penny Styers, an exercise studies junior, says she will miss “FRESH pineapple milkshakes and the kids at the orphanage” most.

Tim Myatt sums up the real nature and purpose of J-term travel courses with “I saw in the lives of the student’s not only great skills, but so much Kingdom potential.”

Papua New Guinea (January 2001)

In January 2001, members of the MVNU Computer Science Department participated in the course entitled "Seminar in International Development." The CS team, lead by Dr. Jim Skon, computer science professor, built and installed a 40-node wireless network at the Kudjip Nazarene mission hospital in the Western Highland Plains of Papua New Guinea.

During the 18 months leading up to the trip, students in Dr. Skon's Software Engineering course met with Dr. Jim Radcliff, the chief surgeon at the Nazarene hospital and MVNU alumnus, to design a database system to manage the inpatient records for the 100-bed hospital. During the summer prior to the trip, Greg Reynolds, then a computer science junior at MVNC, was funded through grant money to implement the database system. The resulting client/server system, written in C++, used a web-based interface to allow a high level of client portability. The database itself resided on a Linux server using the PostgreSQL database software.

On January 2, 2001, 17 students departed for PNG with 11 computers, six network hubs, thousands of network cables and five wireless bridges and antennas. Students worked to internally network five separate buildings with Ethernet (including the 30 existing computers). Then the five buildings were linked via wireless bridges. The Linux server, in the main hospital building, was set up as a file server, and e-mail server, and a PPP dialup server (for access from mission homes), in addition to its use as the database server. Students worked during the last week to train hospital personnel on system use and maintenance.

Students also experienced many church, sightseeing, and cultural events, including a traditional outdoor feast, a hike up into the rain-forested mountains, and a traditional festival. Several daring pre-medical students observed and even assisted in surgery!