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CommunityArchitecture/Leads/LibertyUniversity
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Liberty University
Community Contact
GregDeKoenigsberg
University Contact
Ronald Sones (rsones liberty edu)
March 2008
On Friday, March 7th 2008, I met with Dr. Ronald Sones, the dean of the School of Engineering & Computational Sciences at Liberty University. Liberty is the school founded by Jerry Falwell, and they are one of the largest schools for evangelical Christians in the world. They are also *extremely* interested in incorporating open source deeply into their computer science curriculum. Thanks to Anderson Silva, Liberty alum, for tipping me off to this opportunity.
We talked for a few hours about the possibility of working with Liberty to help them develop a full computer science curriculum around open source software development. Liberty's great advantage is that they are (a) a private school, and (b) a fairly young school, so we have a unique opportunity to get in "on the ground floor," so to speak.
An interesting wrinkle of working with Liberty is the natural alignment of goals. Evangelical Christians place high value on "good works", as does the open source community; giving Liberty students the opportunity to help others as an integral part of their coursework resonates very strongly.
The advantages to Liberty are clear: they want their computer science program to gain more recognition, and aligning with Red Hat's brand will provide them with just such an opportunity.
Next steps: Dr. Sones is currently evaluating his curriculum, and will be in touch as he sees opportunities for open source integration. I have promised that we will help him with both subject matter experts and press as he proceeds. They will be sending a professor (Dr. Tucker, I believe) to my talk at CSEET in April, where I hope to be able to have more fruitful discussions.
