Annual Report 2019-2020
Research Partnerships
Bowie State students, especially those in computer science and technology, benefit from partnerships with industry leaders.
Partnerships Generate Real-World Solutions
Because curating invaluable experiential opportunities for students is a continual priority at Bowie State University, building and advancing strategic partnerships with local businesses and institutions that welcome hands-on learning is a continual priority too.
In fall 2019, a leading federal consulting firm became a sophisticated training ground for Bowie State students to resolve high-level cybersecurity and engineering issues. Thanks to a year-long research grant partnership between the Maryland Center at Bowie State University and Millennium Corporation, an Arlington-based company that supports military and government agencies, students applied what they learned in class to analyze complex contracts and build additional skills under the mentorship of expert operations leaders.
“We really promote partnering. Besides providing real-world experiences, it also presents possible internships and job placements for our students,” Dr. Rose Shumba, chair of the Department of Computer Science, said of the university-wide focus. “In some cases, students are actually working with Bowie faculty on these projects, which helps build student retention and their sense of community. Not only that, but they also learn and get a stipend for working on outside-funded projects.”
Putting curricular lessons in action, BSU undergrads joined an elite, interdisciplinary Data Science Corps with students from three other Maryland universities to draft life improvement projects that benefit Baltimore residents. The collaboration earned Bowie State a $180,000 National Science Foundation grant.
We really promote partnering. Besides providing real-world experiences, it also presents possible internships and job placements for our students.
- Dr. Rose Shumba, chair of the Department of Computer Science
And as part of a spring 2020 capstone project with Infor, a global enterprise software company, five teams of 25 computer science students applied their cloud computing and development training to design a SMART campus technology to make scheduling facility maintenance on campus more efficient.
Shumba also credits the opportunities for providing learning platforms that extend beyond academic needs, including one with Cvent, a meetings and hospitality tech company in McLean that selected four Bowie State students for paid co-ops in fall 2020 that eased the financial burden to continue their education.
Through partnerships, students’ exposure to specialized research, projects and problem solving puts them in the college-to-career pipeline for evolving, in-demand jobs. “I have maybe four, five waiting companies that have asked, ‘Hey, can we talk about how we can partner with Bowie State?’” said Shumba. “As a center of academic excellence, we try to push that as long as students have the core of computer science, they can easily transition into other areas like cybersecurity and data science, which is what we really want them to move towards.”
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