James Madison University

A Passion for Computer Science Leads to Unique Opportunities

Computer Science has given David Strickland many unique opportunities. He thinks the JMU program is special because of the small class sizes and the faculty's one-on-one relationship with students.

It was the new technological advancements introduced in his high school that inspired David Strickland, a junior at James Madison University, to pursue a career in Computer Science. He says, “I got hooked into it in about ninth or tenth grade. I just decided it was something that I could do for the rest of my life.” After choosing a desired major, picking a college that would cultivate these goals was the next choice that David faced. While he was accepted to other noteworthy colleges, such as William and Mary and the University of Virginia, he chose to go to JMU because it has a smaller CS department, which meant a more personalized relationship with the professors.

David’s strong passion for Computer Science did not stop at merely taking classes and pursuing a degree. Once at JMU, David began attending ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) meetings and participating in their club-related activities. After serving as a member of the ACM for two years, David was elected President in April 2005. In the fall of 2005, he was awarded a scholarship for $1000 from the Technology Alumni Group.

That same year, David was also a member of a JMU team sent to the University of Virginia to compete in the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest. At the competition, teams of three people each were set up at a computer and given “real-world” problems to solve by creating a computer program. While some schools take the competition very seriously, David says that his team just went to have fun and participate in something that they love doing. However, he did say that the experience was enlightening; the competition “opens your eyes to see what others can do in computer programming.”

David applies all that he has learned in Computer Science to the two jobs that he holds at JMU. He is a student programmer for the Institute for Infrastructure and Information Assurance (IIIA), as well as a student assistant to Burruss Hall’s Systems Administrator. At the IIIA, David is a part of the Critical Infrastructure Protection Project (CIPP). The CIPP is a program that aims to increase security for the span of intricate systems that monitor everyday activities, such as electricity and transportation. Due to recent attacks on homeland security, JMU has since joined efforts with George Mason University to aid in these efforts. Under the CIPP, David is working on the Network Security Risk Assessment Model, which involves software that evaluates various networks’ reactions to possible attacks.

While the position as a student programmer at the Institute for Infrastructure never actually existed, David did not let this stop him from sending in a resume. “It was an unsolicited job and I just thought it would be perfect for me. I’m not the type of person who will say, ‘Oh, they don’t do that, so I’m not going to do that,’” he says. It was this drive that got David the job which allows him to hone the Computer Science skills that he has picked up while at JMU. He says, “The classes that I took actually correlate with everything that I’m doing at the job because I’m actually bringing some things that I learned in the classroom and …implementing them while I’m at work.”
To prospective students interested in Computer Science, David advises them to start out by taking related courses in high school. Taking high school classes “kind of breaks the ice, ‘Do I want to do this, do I not want to do this’ it kind of leads in to the college career,” David says of the best advice he could offer. He also urges soon-to-be college freshman to “visit JMU [and] contact some of the professors, they really want a one-on-one relationship with the students.”