The CogDog will be doing a lot more running around for the time being. It is not just the zaniness of semester start up, but I am feeling the loss of a valuable part-time student programmer who has been with MCLI for 5 years. This reduces my technology staff from 1.5 to 1.0, and that 1.0 is… ahem, moi.
Colen was the third student we have taken on here, and it was a given that he would move on at anytime. He has been the principle programming and database support behind the Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX), the online application and review system for our Learning Grants program, and some new online apps for our Faculty Professional Growth applications. Plus he handled the processing of our digital photos, the maintenance of a number of web sites, and he did the admin on a bunch of Linux test servers. And a lot of troubleshooting for the staff in our office.
Colen was the third of student programming successes I have been lucky to find– each time I have found a young students in our system who has strong, self-motivated interest in computers, not necessarily out of the box skills. Colen was here a few years to get to his level of expertise. The first student went out on his own and has a successful web business, surviving the dot-com blowout. The second student finished his ASU undergraduate degree and now is a full time web developer for a resort in California.
I am proud that Colen has gotten a full time staff position (benefits!) at our neighbor, Arizona State University. this has been one of the expected outcomes when you develop young programmers, that they will move on to success, but oy! The pain of starting over. My director recognizes the need for a full staff position to do this work, and while we can make the budget for it, there is apparently a “freeze” on creating new positions within our District Office.
So until then, I am scrambling to maintain web order, hoping to send a hook into the ocean and attract a part time programmer with strong web design (HTML, JavaScript, CSS) and desirably stronger PHP/mySQL, Linux/unix awareness… and who can develop in a MacOSX environment (the PCs here are for testing). Drop the emails, you have to physically work in our office.
It means development of our openMLX is slowed, but not stopped (I am supposed to have a version ready for some projects by October).
